Between Alpha and Omega
by Esmee
Summary: //Chapter 6 is up// 7 is on the way. It's going to be a doozy.
1. Between Alpha and Omega (( one alone ))

Between Alpha and Omega

By, Esmee                     Concept by, Tenshi no Yume

–  –  –

                     First the good news

           It's gonna' feel very nice

           Then the bad news

           You gotta pay a heavy price

           Rip tide, we slid we ride on a deep forbidden sea

           Under we go - so slow

           And you're hanging onto me

           And I say

                     Oh, Oh one more addiction in my world

           Oh one more connection to let go

           Oh floating down the river

           Out of sight forever (From my world)

           It's the only thing I know how to do

                     I reject you

           But I can't follow through

           I'd forget you

           But you'd end up tappin' on my back door

           Somehow I lost myself

           In a tunnel long and black

           Somewhere, at the end, I pretend

           There's a way of turning back

                      Oh, Oh one more addiction in my world

           Oh one more connection to let go

           Oh floating down the river

           Out of sight forever (From my world)

           It's the only thing I know how to do

                     Take a breath

           Let it out

           All the things you frown about are meaningless of course, unless you're doing this for real I guess

           I meant to but

           I don't know what

           Is in the way and could I say

           It's you I bet

           I won't forget

           Maybe I'm not ready yet

                     Oh, Oh one more addiction in my world

           Oh one more connection to let go

           Oh floating down the river

           Out of sight forever (From my world)

           It's the only thing I know how to do

_                     'one more addiction'_

_                     ~Natalie Imbruglia_

–  –  –

0.

          I sit in the recesses of the shadows and wait.

          I wait for them to come. Or for the never-ending night to finally take what it was promised.

          But I am fooling myself.

          They will never come, and the night itself rejects me.

          I am a reject from the world of the Dead, as well as that of the Living. So I sit in the shadows; the shadows of my life, the shadows of my mind, the shadows of my soul, and I wait for my Master to give me my orders.

          I suppose it's entirely my own fault really, but that's in the past and as I was once told, "The past is the past. You must live in the present."

          I sit in the blackest of shadows, as if to hide my own bloodstained hands from my sight.

          Mirrors, once one of my favorite objects, now repulse me because of what I perceive in their depth.

I could almost laugh at the child I once was, a pitiful, self-centered child. Now I am a bloodstained weapon wielded by my Masters dark hands. Such a far cry from that child, I could laugh.

          Almost.

          I have heard the stories told around the night-fires, the stories of the new general who leaves a bloody after-path where ever she goes, the new general who is even more powerful than her Master, the new general who is death on dark wings.

          I have heard them all, and they are true.

          I _do leave a bloody path behind me._

          I _am more powerful than my Master; if it were not for the vow I gave I think I would kill him too._

          I _can be death, though I don't like assuming that identity for long._

          So now I wait again, pushing down and away the last of my fragile humanity into the darkest crevice of what is left of my soul. And the next order is simple.

          Kill.

_          Kill. He tells me. __All of them. Leave none alive._

          So I kill and again I wait.

          What I wait for I'm not sure, _why I wait I have even less of an idea._

          But I don't stop waiting.

          I can't.

** ((CHAPTER I: ONE ALONE))**

1.

          When one is young, one believes they are invincible. They believe they are immortal. They believe in forever. They are innocent fools, but fools nonetheless. They think that no matter how bad things get, that it will always get better, and that they will always win out in the end.

          They refuse to believe that they can lose.

          No one in the group had anticipated Myotismon to launch an attack so soon, after the previous battle. And because of that fact they were hard pressed, in other words they were losing. Badly.

2.

          The sunlight was filtering down through the trees in jewel-bright colors. Ruby, emerald, topaz, amethyst, and amber, twisting the light into ropes of bright and vivacious colors. Joyful colors. Victorious colors. A warm breeze tinted with the sent of exotic flowers curled around the small group, lifting hair and tickling faces. A sky the color of a highly polished turquoise arched overhead, promising a warm night. 

 _         Mimi was happy, surprisingly happy. She was with all her friends, they had fought and won a battle with Myotismon, and at the moment anything seemed possible, maybe even getting home. After all, if __Taichi had been able to go back, maybe they could find a way too. She missed her Mother and Father, and - though she hated to admit it - even her little brother._

          As she walked, her mind drifted to the previous battle.

          They had all been looking for Sora, and when they had finally found her she told them she couldn't get her crest to glow. Then Myotismon had attacked and Sora had gotten her crest to glow, making Biyomon digivolve into Garudamon. Garudamon had driven Myotismon back and then taken all the children to safety before de-digivolving into Yokomon.

          She couldn't wait for her crest to glow and for Palmon to digivolve to her ultimate form.

          But something had been puzzling her. It wasn't always obvious to people but, Mimi was actually quite a perceptive girl and she had noticed something rather puzzling about the Digimon.

          "Palmon," She began. "I've been thinking-" 

          "Oh no!" Taichi interrupted, rolling his eyes with a groan. "Everyone run for cover! Mimi's been thinking again!"

          "Taichi . . . " Sora began her gentle reprimand, but there was a glint of laughter in her eyes.

          "Shut up Taichi." Yamato said at the same time. Everyone looked at him in surprise but he ignored them and said, "Go on Mimi."

          "-That we really don't know all that much about you Digimon, do we?" She continued as if she hadn't been interrupted, a cheerful, oblivious expression pasted on her face. She knew they thought of her as the 'Barbie' girl, the whiny spoiled brat who wanted everything her way, but to be reminded about it like that hurt. Though she was very surprised - and pleased - that Yamato had stood up for her like that. _Maybe he doesn't think I'm only a spoiled brat . . ._

          "What do you mean?" Asked Palmon, surprised.

          "Well." Mimi said thoughtfully. "We don't know anything about your families, or your customs, or really anything about your society, do we? I mean do you have holidays? Do you have schools? Can Digimon digivolve without humans? Do you-" But whatever else she was about to say was cut off by the roar, _"Night Raid!"_  

3.

          From that moment the battle had gone from bad to worse. Most of the Digimon were still exhausted from the previous fight and Biyomon - who had digivolved from Yokomon at the beginning of the battle - was down for the count.

          _"Dead Scream!"_ Myotismon roared.

          "We can't keep this up much longer." Sora panted, carrying the semi-conscious Biymon.

          "I know! But what can we do?" Jyou gasped as they dodged another of Myotismon's attacks.

          Mimi was breathing too hard to reply, and then she saw Yamato.

          She was running before anyone else had even realized what was about to happen, before _she even realized what she was about to do. The only thing she could thing of was how sad Takeru would be if Yamato got hurt. She slammed into Yamato sending him flying, just as Myotismon's attack ripped through the ground where Yamato had stood._

          The ground where Mimi now stood.

          As the words, _"Bloody Stream!"_ filled the air, the blood-colored electricity tore through Mimi, lifting her body in the air a few meters before leaving it charred and unmoving on the ground.

          "_Mimi!_" Togemon screamed as she watched the lightening engulf her Chosen.

          "How wonderfully unexpected!" Myotismon chuckled, gliding down to Mimi's still body. "I kill one of the Chosen, _and_ get to keep her body! Just delightful."

          Then, while all the Chosen stood frozen in numbing shock, he grabbed her limp arm and disappeared. 

4.__

_          Where . . . Was the first muzzy thought that drifted through Mimi's waking mind._

          She shook her head to get rid of the last few tendrils of sleep that clung to her then, wincing, she sat up and turned her attention on her surroundings.

          From what she could tell, she seemed to be in a large stone room, there were no windows anywhere that she could see - the only light came from a sputtering torch hanging on otherwise bare walls. She appeared to be sitting on a large stone slab, covered in many nicks and scratches; in several places she could see dark stains. She forced her thoughts away from the many unpleasant possibilities of what they might be her mind was coming up with.   

          "Where am I?" Mimi whispered, listening to her voice echoing away into the dark.

          It was very obvious that she was alone, even her hat was gone.

          Then she remembered. She remembered pushing Yamato out of the way of Myotismon's attack. She remembered Togemon's scream.

          She remembered pain.

          After the pain, she remembered darkness. "What happened? Did I die?" Mimi wondered aloud, using a bare hand to tuck a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. It seemed her gloves were also gone.

          "No, you didn't die." The low chuckle bounced around the semi-dark room. "You were _dying, but my powers saved you."  _

          She knew that voice; it haunted her sleep. "Myotismon . . ." She hissed, then what he had said registered in her mind, giving her words a slight edge of fear. "What do you mean, your powers saved me? Why would you do that?"

          Myotismon glided out of the shadows, the faint light of the torch lighting-up his disturbingly handsome face. "I meant what I said, my powers _did save you, and the reason I did that is quite simple." He smiled revealing his fangs. "I've been watching you children for quite a while and you my dear, you . . . intrigued me."_

          "Why?" She asked, anger starting to take the place of fear. _How dare he . . . _

          He smoothly glided in front of her and stared down at her. "Because we're the same."

          "I'm _nothing like you!" Mimi spat._

          "Are you really so sure, child? Do you honestly think those other people care anything about you?" He asked circling her.

          "Of course they do! They're my friends, not that you would know anything about friendship." She retorted, quite angry now. "Leave me alone! I don't want anything to do with you." She yelled, though she didn't really expect him to.

          Surprisingly he did.

          But as he started to retreat into the dark he asked one last question. "Are they?" And disappeared before Mimi could answer.

          "They'll come for me! You'll see!" She yelled into the dark, but the only reply she received was the echoes.

5.

          Mimi sat very still after Myotismon left the room, resisting an overpowering urge to cry or at least whimper. _Crying won't solve anything. She scolded herself firmly.__ My first priority getting out of here, I can cry later__. I will__ get out of here. She resolved that when she got out of there she would have a good, long cry. A healthy one, strong and fast; like a summer rainstorm. The kind that wipes away humidity and leaves freshness behind. Yes, that was what she would do._

          She wasn't sure how long she had been sitting in that room, there was no way to tell what time of day it was, so she got up and went over to the torch hanging on the wall and pulled it down with a grimace. The handle was covered in layers of cobwebs and grime, she didn't really want to touch it with out her gloves but it couldn't be helped; she needed the light.

          Using the torch to light her way, Mimi left the room and started to look for away out. That was the first of what would be many long, lonely steps.

6.

          Mimi was walking down a long hallway, lit sparsely with the same sputtering torches that had lit the room she had woken up in. Hanging here and there, were the rotting remains of blackened tapestry. Dust covered everything. She sighed, she wasn't sure how long she had been here, in this prison of gray stone, but she knew it was a long time.

          At first she had walked until exhaustion claimed her, and she'd fallen asleep. She had repeated that pattern three times. 

          During this time she'd had several visits from Myotismon, he seemed to take unadultered pleasure from tormenting her then vanishing, leaving her with cryptic and disturbing thoughts. She had not been attacked, in fact she hadn't found any other living creatures beside herself - Myotismon didn't count.

          She heard a whispery sound behind her, but being used to it now didn't bother to turn around. "Go away."

          "I'm hurt, child." Myotismon mocked. "I thought I would merit a little more of a response than that."

          Having popped up this way many times since she'd left the (relative) safety of the room she had woken up in, it no longer surprised her; in fact it was starting to irritate her.

          "You merit _nothing from me." She said with a snort. "I'm tired of your games. If you're going to kill me, then do so already." __Stop playing with me. She added silently resentful._

          "Why would I kill you, after I went through all the trouble of saving you?"

          Oh how she wanted to hit that smug face. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because you're a sadistic murderer?"

          "Join me." He asked abruptly.

          "What."

          "Join me." He repeated. "I could make you powerful." He said softly, staring down at her.

          Mimi stared at him in disbelief. "Are you deaf, or just stupid? When my friends get here-"

          "Ah yes, when your _friends get here. You've said that quite a number of times since I . . . acquired you, and I've yet to see one of them. You __do know its been a week since I took you, don't you?"_

          _A week? They must be having some really__ serious problems to take so long. But still, a week . . . ? She bit the inside of her cheek as the thought scampered through her mind, than scolded herself for thinking such a thing. "So what? They'll come." She said with confidence she didn't feel._

          "But I can't help thinking," Myotismon mused on, ignoring her. "That other girl in your group, Sora I believe? They would have gotten her back within a day, wouldn't they?"

          "They would do the same for any of the others!" She retorted hotly.

          "Then why not you? Why aren't they here?"

          Deep down she had been wondering this too, but she would be damned if she would let _him know that. "They'll be here! Just leave me alone!"  _

          "As you wish."

          She was alone again, but she didn't continue down the hall. Instead, she sank down onto the floor, pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees and cried. Not like a summer rainstorm, quick, violent, and healthy, but like a winter drizzle. Quietly, bitterly, and harmfully lasting.

7.

          Two weeks.

          After that informative little chat with Myotismon, Mimi had been keeping count of the days as best she could, and her rough estimate was somewhere around two weeks, give or take a day or two.

          It was strange really, Myotismon never made a move to prevent her access to anything - she had even found food and water in one of the many rooms - but she was no closer to finding an exit than she had been in the beginning.

          She also still hadn't found another living - or dead - creature during the entire time, only Myotismon and he didn't count.

          What she found hardest to endure was the loneliness. Sometimes the loneliness became so great that she would have talked to anyone, even Myotismon. The only way she kept herself from breaking down completely was by repeating a calming mantra of, 'They are coming. They'll be here.' to herself, but now doubts floated through her mind like storm clouds in a clear sky.

          A sound ahead of her caught her attention; it wasn't the whispery hiss of Myotismon's cloak. It sounded like a strong wind, or water running. Or people talking.

          She raced down the corridor and came to a stop in front of a large door that was partly open. It was an old door, the front was covered in dust, but she could see that once it had been magnificently carved. Pushing it open, she stepped into a small room, bare of the fragments of rotting tapestry that decorated every other hallway and room she had been in so far, and in the center stood a large oval mirror in better condition than anything else she had seen in this place. The mirror's surface was dark.

          She felt a wave of disappointment wash over her, tightening her chest and gut, but something about this mirror drew her, making her ignore - or at least push away - the disappointment. As she stepped up to it, the mirror flared to life. It became a whirlpool of erratic swirling colors and sounds, and then it slowed and finally stopped on a very familiar scene.

          Thirteen shadows were sitting around a campfire, seven were Digimon, and six were children.

          Her friends.

          Mimi uttered an inarticulate cry of relief. They were all right! She had been worrying for sometime whether they had been hurt or something. She was so relieved to see them that she didn't notice at first that they were talking.

          "–Strange with Mimi gone." Sora was saying softly.

          "Yeah, it's so peaceful now that we don't have to listen to her whining all the time." This was Taichi speaking.

           _We've never really gotten along, but he doesn't mean that, did he?_

          "We've encountered half as much trouble, than when she was with us." Palmon said.

          _How can she say that? She can't be saying that, She's my best friend._

          "We don't have to stop every ten minutes, when we're walking any more." Yamato added.

          _No, Yamato couldn't be saying that, not Yamato, please no . . ._

          Koushiro and Jyou nodded.

          "I'm almost glad she's gone." Jyou was saying.

_          I've always thought of him as a friend, always supported him when he asked to take a break. Why?_

          "Almost . . . ?" Koushiro questioned, a glint of – Laughter? – in his eyes. 

          _Please not him too._

          "Now I have to carry the food bag all the time." Jyou explained for Koushiro.

          Feeling something shatter in her chest, Mimi uttered a choked sob, and fled.

8.

          _Run._

          There was nothing but the constant sting of her feet as they hit the ground.

          _Run. Get away._

          There was nothing in her but an aching emptiness, so large and sharp she thought it would cut her open and spill out her soul for the world to see.

          _Run. Get away. Don't stop._

          There was nothing but the running, the aching, and the silent screaming of her soul.

          _Move._

          She ran back through the corridors unseeing, the words her friends had said filling up her mind, screaming themselves at her over and over.

_           . . . don't have to listen to her whining . . ._

         _No, no, no, no. She chanted in her mind to the rhythm of the blood pounding in her ears as she ran down the corridors. Her shadow circled her in flickering waves of black and yellow light. _

_          . . . half as much trouble . . ._

          She skidded around a corner, slamming into the wall, but it did nothing to slow her forward momentum. Her breath was harsh in her throat. _No, no, no, no._

_          . . . don't have to stop every ten minutes . . ._

          She tripped on the hem of her skirt and fell roughly, scrapping the skin off of her arms and knees. She stumbled to her feet, not caring about the scraps and continued running. _No, no, no, no.  _

_          . . . glad she's gone . . ._

          Her every intake of breath hurt now, lungs straining to supply oxygen for tortured muscles. The backs of her calves ached, and the tops of her thighs felt taunt and strained. _No, no, no, no._

_          . . . glad she's gone . . ._

          She couldn't see more than a meter ahead of her and something warm and sticky was sliding down her skin, but she didn't care, she just ran. Letting the emptiness in her spread, she _ran. She was running through white noise now. __No, no, no, no._

_          . . . glad–_

          "NO!" She finally screamed aloud, slamming her fist against the rough stonewall causing her knuckles to bleed. She had stopped running only because she had come to a dead end. It wasn't clear whether she was screaming 'no' because of the dead end, or to stop the voices in her head. She leaned her forehead against the wall, sobbing. She felt her knees start to buckle; she let them and slowly crumpled to the floor. 

          "I see you found my Mirror." Myotismon voice was calm and measured behind her.

          "Leave. Me. Alone!" She grated out between shuddering breaths.

          "I can help you."

          "Go away."

          "I can make you strong."

          " . . . Strong?"

          "Yes. Strong enough to no longer need _friends." His lip curled on the last word._

          Mimi turned her tear stained face towards him. " . . . H- How?"

          Now he crouched down until he was just about level with her. "Join me, and I will make you strong," he said holding out his hand.

          But she still hesitated. "What would I have to do?"

          "Simply give your sincerest vow to serve me."

          In her minds eye she could still see them, still hear their painful words echoing in her ears.

          "Join me, and you will never hurt like this again."

          Emotionally exhausted she didn't think, wouldn't think, beyond the emotional relief he promised, she looked at him and said, "I give you my sincerest vow of loyalty." And she put her bleeding hand on his outstretched palm.

          A silent explosion of light engulfed the two figures on the floor, silhouetting them in a light so bright you almost couldn't see it, and at that moment Mimi Tachikawa ceased to be. 

–  –  –

Note: Throughout this story, every chapter will have a song at the beginning. The songs are not meant to reflect the theme of the _chapter, but of the __story in it's whole. Sometimes I may use a poem or quote. I was listening to 'one more addiction' I thought it really fit the idea of this fic (certain parts of it at least) but you be the judge._

–  –  –


	2. Between Alpha and Omega (( the remembere...

Between Alpha and Omega

By, Esmee                     Concept by, Tenshi no Yuma

–  –  –

           Say what you want

                     Say what you will

                     'Cos I find you think what makes it easier

           And lies spread on lies

                     We don't care

                     Belief is our relief

                    We don't care

_                     'ideas as opiates'_

_                     ~Tears For Fears_

0.

         In the begining I used to watch, sometimes, through windows the Digimon who's lives I was going to destroy. I am not sure why I did - perhaps at the begining I watched them hoping to retaining some small piece of humanity, or perhaps "regain" is a more appropriate wording - watching them before-hand only gave me pain, and destroying them brought me no pleasure.

          No, that's not completely accurate.

          At first when I watched them, it gave me the painful kind of happiness that comes from knowing that even if your life was upside-down, somewhere someone was living normally. Then later, when I watched, I felt envious and sad.

          Envious that I could no longer participate in the simple acts that made up a family.

          Sad that I had to destroy them.

          And then I began to feel resentful.

          Resentful of what I had been before.

          Resentful of what I was now.

          Resentful of what they made me become.

          Resentful of simply being.

          So then, when the time came for me to destroy everything they held dear, I did it gladly.

          No, not even that is right.

          It's not that simple.

          I didn't do it gladly, but I didn't do it sadly either. Part of me wanted them to feel all the pain and rage that I had gone through, I wanted to yell at them at the top of my lungs, '_Look at what I went __through! See the pain I went through, see the rage and humiliation that I went through! How dare you claim to understand pain, humiliation! You can't possible understand what I went through!'  While another part of me wanted to spare them from all I had gone through._

          So I made a compromise with myself.

          Kill all of them, quickly or slowly it doesn't matter, but leave none alive, so as to prevent any the pain of knowing only they had survived.

          Sick reasoning, I know, but now I've stopped feeling anything really, so it's the best I can do. But even the resentment, the sadness, the _rage, I felt was nothing more than the pale shadow of the remembrance of emotion._

          I am not asking for anyone to judge me, or validate what I have done.

          I am not asking for anyone's sympathy, pity, or forgiveness.

          I am not asking for empathy.

          Only comprehension.

          That's all.

** ((CHAPTER II: THE REMEMBERED))**

1.

          "Why aren't we going after them?!" Palmon screamed at them. "We have to save her!"

          "We can't save her Palmon, she's dead." Sora said softly tears dribling down her face as she tried, and failed, to block out the image of a slender form coursing with red pain as it flew through the air.

          "NO! She's NOT dead!" Palmon yelled through intakes of ragged breath. 

          They had all stood numbly watching Myotismon take Mimi's burnt and bloody body, none of them willing to belive what had just happened.

          Then Palmon had started to scream at them, alternatly begging them to go after Mimi and berating them for not going immeaditly. Finally shaken from her stupor by the inborn need to comfort and be comforted, Sora tried to calm the hysterical Palmon. Now, as if her words were some sort of magic trigger, they all started to cry.  

          Taichi, Jyou and, Yamato were all trying valantly not to cry, to be strong, adults. They were failing miserably of course.

          Koushiro didn't even seem aware that he _was crying, and Takeru was sobbing quietly to himself next to his older brother._

          The Digimon themselves were still in shock. These people were _the_ Chosen; Alphamon First Created of the Digiworld protected them. They weren't supposed to lose.

          They weren't supposed to die.

          "We have to find her! We can't just leave her!" Palmon screamed at them again, unwilling to belive that someone so apart of her life was gone even though she had seen it with her own eyes.

          "Palmon," Yamato started, still feeling the warm living solidity of her body connecting with his. Still seeing her body hitting the ground, skin so very pale under the blood and black. Still feeling a helpless rage flooding through him, coloring the shock and horror with a reddish hue. Still hearing the muffled thud of her body as it hit the ground. "I saw her when she fell." He paused trying to keep the bile down. Still remembering, looking into Mimi's sightless amber eyes, seeing no rise and fall of her chest. "She's dead, Palmon." He paused again, trying to steady himself. He would never see her laugh again, or watch her sleep or hear her singing. "You have-" Yamato tried to say, but Palmon interrupted him.

          "She's dead because she pushed _you out of the way!" She flung at him, her voice harsh with tears and pain. "If it weren't for you she'd still here! __You should have died instead of her!" A shocked silence followed as Palmon realized what she had just said, what she had just admitted. Then she started to cry in earnest. "She's dead . . . Mimi's-"_

          Yamato stood there looking like he had just been struck. "Palmon, I-"

          "Don't speak to me! Don't even come near me! _This is all your fault!" She sobbed as she ran off into the woods, which were still painted in the garish circus clown make-up colors that were so hatefully at odds with the horror and pain of the moment._

          It enough to make one want to laugh hysterically. Or weep, whichever took hold first. Whichever gave relief first.

          Yamato looked after Palmon helplessly, a sick feeling in his gut. She was right; it _was_ all his fault.

          "I'm sorry." Yamato whispered to everyone, and no one. "I'm sorry."  

2.

          Palmon didn't come back that night.

          "I hope Palmon's okay." Sora said worried. She had already lost one of her friends; she didn't want to lose another.

          "I'm sure she's fine Sora." Biyomon tried to comfort her, seeing that no one else was going to. "I bet she's on her way back right now."

          At that moment Gennai decided to reappear in their lives.

          "Hello, Chosen. I have some good news and some bad news for you, but you look like you have some news of your own for me."

          The children just stared at the wavering hologram of the old man.

          Surprised by the silence, the old man looked around. "What's with all the long faces around here? You would think someone had died!" He joked.

          For one very intense moment Yamato hated Gennai with every fiber in his young being. _How can he be so callous as not to notice anything?!_

          "What's got you all so disgruntled? Is the girl who wears all that pink – Mimi isn't it? – over-sleeping again?"

          A stony silence answered him again, and this time he looked more closely at the children.

          Taichi and Sora both looked stunned, sad, and more than a little angry; Sora had tears in her eyes, while guilt – and perhaps, failure? – were etched deeply in Tai's face.

          Jyou had a certain familiar grimness in his face that Gennai had seen on so many young soldiers after their first real battle, while his eyes had a vague, far away look. Like he was trying to distance himself from something painful for as long as he could.

          The blonde boy, Yamato he remembered, was looking at him with undisguised hostility. Rage, grief, and guilt warred in his face. He looked like he had just lost something precious, and he knew it, but wasn't precisely sure what he'd lost.

           Koushiro had a terrible, haunted look in his eyes, like he'd seen something he wished he could forget, but he couldn't - wouldn't - allow himself to forget it.

           Takeru looked like he was on the verge of tears, and there was an impression of age around him. Like he had seen something no one should see, especially a child. The Digimon all looked devastated.

          He could not see Mimi or her Digimon.

          Knowledge struck with the terrible uncanny accurate it is apt to have in times of fear and pain.

          He looked at them sadly, his own memories of death crowding him. "I am sorry. I know you are all in pain right now, and I know no words will help with this pain, so I won't give you any. I will leave you to grieve for your loss."

          "Gennai, wait!" Koushiro yelled as the hologram started out flicker.

          "What is it child?" He asked kindly.

          Yamato hated the pity that was evident in both Gennai's voice and manner.

          "As much as I'm grateful to you for allowing us a reprieve to grieve for Mimi," Koushiro's voice cracked as he said her name. "You said you had news."

          "Yes." Gennai sighed. He had news all right, but now was not the right time and there was a new problem to consider now as well. He would need to consult Alopexusmon as well. "Yes, I have news. Both good and bad, but I will not trouble you with it now. It can wait."

          And with that, he left.

3.

          Yamato sighed.

          Ten days.

          It was ten days ago Mimi had died. No, more accurately, he had let her die. Palmon had returned about four days ago. Her skin was grayer now than green, her petals were limp and faded, and her once bright beryl-green eyes were now dull. The first thing she had done when she returned, was to creep over to Yamato and say softly, more a whisper than anything else, in a voice rusty from tears, "I'm sorry I said those things Yamato." and then she crept over to the far side of the fire and curled into a fetal position.

          Yamato glanced over at her now, and smiled slightly at what he saw. Gomamon was doing tricks and telling jokes to Palmon, while Gabumon sat protectively next to her with a small pile of fruit, almost, but not quite, hand-feeding her. An amused smile graced his face as he thought. _I bet if Mimi were here she would say that Gabumon had a crush on Palmon. _

          The smile faded.

          But Mimi wasn't here, would never be here again, and it was all his fault.

          Gennai hadn't contacted them yet, and Yamato was eternally grateful of that. He still felt angry with Gennai. Angry that he hadn't tried to warn them, angry that he hadn't tried to help them, angry that he was here and Mimi wasn't. Yamato sighed again. It was useless to be angry with Gennai; after all he hadn't brought them here. 

          It was strange, the guilt he was feeling. The others were sad, that was very obvious, sad, and afraid. After all, if it could happen to Mimi, it could happen to anyone. After everything, they weren't immortal. But he felt more than simply sad, or afraid. He missed her so much that it physically hurt, it felt like there was a band around his chest whenever he thought about her, and that was often. She had pushed him out of the way at the cost of her life and he hadn't done anything to deserve it. He felt guilty, not just about her death, but about all the times he could have been nice to her, and wasn't. He was confused by his feelings and didn't want to think about them. 

          Trying to get his mind off this painful and confusing subject, he looked around to see what the others were doing.

          Jyou was getting some more firewood. That seemed to be how he coped with the pain; by doing all the extra work he could. 

          Takeru was talking to Patamon softly. Yamato worried about him; he was much to young to have something like this happen to him. They were all to young for this. 

          Sora was simply staring into the fire. Biyomon was curled up next to her, she was doing her best to cheer Sora up, but it's hard to cheer someone up when you yourself are unhappy.

          Taichi was looking up at the stars with Agumon. Taichi had been quiet and subdued of late, almost thoughtful and perhaps a little guilty. Yamato hoped he felt guilty, remembering all the time that Taichi had been cruel to her for no reason.

          Koushiro was typing away on his laptop with Tentomon hanging over his shoulder. Yamato almost laughed. Come hell or high water, Koushiro would still be typing away on his computer. He could have almost laughed, if he hadn't known what Koushiro was trying to look up.

          He was looking for a long and painful way to destroy Myotismon.

          Yamato sighed. Even when they killed Myotismon it wouldn't bring Mimi back, it might make him feel much better, but it wouldn't bring her back.

_          She'll never try to weasel out of work again, or insist on those pointless little things anymore, never beg to stop and rest anymore or complain about the food or want to take a bath every time we stop by a stream or lake, or make us laugh, or sing to Takeru . . . Things that he had found irritating or silly before made__ tears come perilously close to the surface now. It was true; you never did realize the value of a person until they were gone. _

          Even though ten days had passed, it still felt like yesterday.     

          It hurt so much.

          Jyou put more wood on the fire and then came over and sat next to him. Surprisingly Jyou seemed stronger because of her death, more mature. Yamato supposed they all were more mature, but he just felt so horribly young and powerless.

          Silence fell over them, wrapping them in a cloak of contemplative silence. The fire cast ghoulish masks on their faces, while sparks shot upward, miniature stars trying to return to the darkly lit dome above them. For a moment peace caught them, woven from a net of fire and starlight around them.  

          "It still feels so strange with Mimi gone." Sora said softly, shattering the silence like glass.

          "Yeah," Taichi said, Yamato could see that he was trying to lighten the mood. "It's so peaceful now that we don't have to listen to her whining all the time." He failed miserably, but the others picked up the thought and tried to add on to it.

          "We've encountered half as much trouble, than when she was with us." Palmon said, surprising them with a weak smile.

          "We don't have to stop every ten minutes, when we're walking any more." Yamato joked. _Bad joke, very bad joke._

          Koushiro and Jyou nodded, though tears gleamed in Koushiro's eyes.

          "I'm almost glad she's gone." Jyou said. 

          Yamato stared at him, what did he mean 'almost glad'?

          "Almost...?" Koushiro asked, a glint of anger in his eyes. 

          "Now I have to carry the food bag all the time." Jyou elaborated with a sickly grin.

          They all fell silent again.

          Then Takeru spoke, his voice sounding so small and lost in the silence. "But I still want her to come back."

          Everyone else nodded in agreement, not trusting his or her voices. Silence reigned again, punctuated every once and again by the faint hiss of the fire.

          After what seemed an eternity later, Jyou asked who would be taking Mimi's watch for the night.

          "I will." Yamato volunteered quickly.

          The others all looked at each other. "Yamato," Sora said gently. "You've been taking her watch for the past ten days. You should let someone else take it. You need to rest."

          "No, Sora. I'm fine. Really." Yamato tried to smile, but the muscles around his mouth felt stiff, the smile false. "I'm going to take over Mimi's watch from now on."

          "But-" What ever protests the others were about to use, were cut off by an explosion of greenish-white light from Palmon.

          The explosion made no sound and didn't damage anyone, but they were all rubbing their eyes for several minutes before they could see again.

          "Just what was _that?" Koushiro asked, still rubbing his eyes._

          "I don't know." Palmon answer, sobbing. Now that they could see again, they could all see that she was weeping as if her heart was broken. Gomamon tried to reach out to her, but she shied away, cowering into herself. She continued to weep. "I just don't know."

–  –  –


	3. Between Alpha and Omega (( angel ))

Between Alpha and Omega

By, Esmee                      Concept by, Tenshi no Yuma

–  –  – 

           Heaven comes to he who waits

                     But I know I'm getting nowhere

                     And all the deeds of yesterday

                     Have really helped to pave my way

                     Though there's no one near me now

                     How come everyone can touch me

                     You see the torture on my brow

                     Relates to neither here nor now

           Watch me bleed

                      Bleed forever

                      Although my face is straight, it lies

                      My body feels the Pain and cries

           Here the table is not bare

                      I am full but feeling empty

                      For all the warmth it feels so cold

                      For one so young I feel so old

           Watch me bleed

                      Bleed forever

                      It's not allowed to be unkind

                      But still the hate lives in my mind

           I'll make no noise

                      I'll hide my Pain

                      I'll close my eyes

                      I won't complain

                      I'll lie right back and take the blame

                      And trie to tell myself I'm living

                      And when it's all been said or done

                      Where do I go?

                      Where do I run?

                      What's left of me or anyone when we've denied

                      The Hurting?

_                      'watch me bleed'_

_                      ~Tears For Fears_

0.

          I hate red, and pink.

          Why?

          Pink, because it is so close to the color red.

          Red, because it is the color of so many lies, like love.

          Red, because it is the color of so many truths, like fire and rage.

          And blood.

          It's amusing that I can hate a color so much, but can't feel anything else for anything or anyone.

          Pink.

          Once that was my favorite color, that and red. But now I can't stand either.

          Ironic, isn't it?

          The colors that I abhor the most are the colors that look the most . . . stunning . . . on me.

          I prefer blacks and grays now, anyway.

          But, sometimes, I wear red in spite of myself.

          A deep and bright red.

          A blood red.

          Ironic, isn't it?

**((CHAPTER III: ANGEL))**

1.

          To say that Demidevimon was not happy was an understatement; it would be like calling a hurricane a breeze.

          When Myotismon had first informed his two generals that they would soon be receiving a third, he had been more than a little surprised to say the least, and when he had finally met the elusive third general he had been frightened. Very frightened. More frightened of _this one then he was of Myotismon. _

          And it was not merely his cowardice speaking, though Omegamon knows he had a lot of that. He was not powerful, far from it, he was also not very smart and he knew it, so he was sneaky and manipulative. 

           The way he manipulated people was really quite ingenious. By watching people and using their most base emotions, their weakest moment –a moment of doubt, or fear, or envy, and nurturing it until it bore fruit. Few people realized it, but that was his true power.

          He could sniff out those emotions from a continent away.

          He shivered as he remembered the storm of violence he could sense under the power that radiated off this general.  

          Drifting down the long, stone corridors towards Myotismon's audience chambers, to which he had just been summoned, he let his mind wander back over the past two weeks.

* * *

          When Myotismon had returned with one of the Chosen brats, he had been ecstatic. Finally he could pay at least _one of them back for all the pain they had caused him, but then he saw that she was barely breathing and pouted. _

          "Ah Boss," He whined. "She's already dying, there's no fun in that."

          Myotismon had calmly ordered him away, and he had not thought about it again, until about three days later when saw her on one of the monitors.  

          "Uh, Boss? Why is the girl still alive?" He asked. He was hesitant to question his Master, but curious as to why the girl was still alive.

          "Tell me Demidevimon, do you know the [ Prophecy ]?"

          Demidevimon was surprised. He had been expecting a punishment, not a reply. "Uh, not by heart, no, but I know the gist of it."

          "Tell me what you know of it."

          "Uh, well, it's something about '[ Angels ]', and '[ Arrows ]', and 'The [ Eight ]', and, uhh, I can't remember anymore." 

          Myotismon sighed; Demidevimon cringed.

          "The [ Prophecy ] says; 'And the [ Eight ] shall come and [ Angels ] will shoot [ Arrows ] of [ Light ] and [ Hope ] and a miracle will appear.' Do you realize what that means?"

          "Uhhh, no?" He cringed again.

          "Your idiocy continues to amaze me." Myotismon sighed deeply. "The [ Prophecy ] states 'The [ Eight ]'. How many children are there right now?"

          "Seven, because you didn't kill the girl."

          "And if the other children think that she's dead, how many would there be?"

          "But she's not dead."

          "Humor me."

          "Uhh, if they think she's dead, six."

          "And the [ Prophecy ] says there must be [ Eight ]." Satisfaction was thickly coiled in the Master's voice.

          "Uh, Boss? What's this got to do with anything? I thought we were going to go find the eighth child."

          Myotismon raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Omegamon, give me the strength to endure." 

          Demidevimon cowered, sure that he would be punished now, but no blow fell.

          "The [ Prophecy ] says [ Eight ], but right now they belive they only have six. Before, they only needed to find one more child, but now they think they need two." Myotismon spoke slowly, as if to a puer.

          "But Boss, the girl isn't dead so there would be nine children."

          "Correct."

          "But the [ Prophecy ] only needs eight . . ."

          Myotismon waited as Demidevimon fully realized what Myotismon had done.

          "They won't be able to fulfill the [ Prophecy ], will they?"

          Myotismon turned and stared at the monitors. "No. Although the [ Prophecy ] did not specify _who the children were, it did say that there had to be [ Eight ]. Not seven, not nine, eight."_

          "So you're going to keep her alive?"

          "Yes." Myotismon had chuckled. "Yes; I'll keep her . . . alive."

* * *

          As he remembered this, he shuddered. He wasn't sure what had happened to the girl after that, but that laugh had not been a pleasant one.

          Then he pulled himself together, realizing that he would be late for the summons Myotismon had sent if he didn't hurry.

2.

          Creeping into the large, semi-dark audience chambers, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. Myotismon wasn't here yet, so he wasn't in any trouble. Yet.

          Gatomon was giving him a cold, hard glare. "You're late." She hissed

          "So is Myotismon." He retorted.

          "The _Master is allowed to be late. You're not."_

          "Oh! What's this! You're _worrying about me? Getting soft are we?" He mocked._

          She only narrowed her eyes.

          Seeing that Gatomon wouldn't be baited, he settled down to wait for the Master.

          The audience chamber was a large room draped in shadows, the only furniture in the room was a rather large stone chair standing in a small pool of light. The chair stood on a small dais, and the tall three-pronged iron candelabra on its right was the only light in the room, besides the two single-pronged candelabras that flanked the door on either side. The rest of the room was painted with shade and shadows.             

          Demidevimon was not overly fond of the damp, or cold, or dark, particularly the dark - his idea of pleasure involved lying in the sun with many servants - and now was no exception. If anything he was even more nervous than normally, he found himself looking twice into every shadow, wary of what - or who - it might hide.  

          Glancing around he wondered where the new general was; the summonings had said _all the generals were required. He scowled, not knowing where the new one was made him uneasy. He did not like not knowing things. He shivered glancing into the shadows again, remembering down to the last detail the way __SHE had slipped out of the dark, silent but for the soft whisper of skirt and wings trailing gently behind her in the dust, so silent she might have been no more than a shadow herself, so silent that he hadn't even known that she was in the room until Myotismon had called her forth. It had terrified him._

          "Ahh, good. You're all here." Myotismon's deep voice echoed through the chambers, interrupting his thoughts.

          Snapping to attention, he and Gatomon watched their Master glide to the stone chair. As he watched Myotismon sit on the bare stone, Demidevimon idly wondered how he could stand sitting on cold stone._ If I were him, I'd have at least one__ pillow on there . . .  _

          "Report."

          Instantly Gatomon stepped forward and gave her report.

          _Showoff. Demidevimon thought sourly, then he realized belatedly that it was HIS turn to give his report. "Oh. Right. The report. Ah, you see, um. Well, we got some new recruits, and um . . ." He trailed off, desperately trying to remember what he was suppose to be reporting on, and coming up with a big blank. He could feel Gatomon silently laughing at him. _

          "Enough." Myotismon said waving a hand negligently. "That is sufficient." 

          Grateful to be let off the hook so easily, Demidevimon slid back into place beside Gatomon, but he knew this audience was far from over. He knew what was going to happen next, already he could feel his blood start to race, already he could feel beads of sweat start to dot his brow. He glanced over at Gatomon, she was calm; not a twitch betrayed her. _'Don't you know what's coming?!'  He wanted to yell at her, envying her calm, when it took all he had just to stand there and not run far away. In fact, Myotismon was the only thing keeping him on the same continent as this thing. He could barely keep himself from shuddering._

          _HER entrance was heralded by the soft, whispering hiss of feathers dragging across stone. The storm cloud-gray cloth of her skirt pooled about her as she knelt before Myotismon, huge midnight wings overshadowed her face and fanned out around her like black lace, obscuring most of her from view.  The only thing not darkened by her wings, was her hair; the tarnished silver-white color of a storming sea._

          "Report."

          She hadn't spoken last time, but her voice was a clear soprano that Demidevimon remembered very well. Very well indeed._ She couldn't be . . ._

          "I have completed your orders, Master. The village on the north-east side of File Island has been annilated."

          Demidevimon had heard the words, but failed to grasp the full meaning at once, where as Gatomon had instantly comprehended what it meant. So had Myotismon. 

          "All dead?" Myotismon queried leaning forward, rather eagerly Demidevimon thought privately. "None still live?"

          "None."

          "Good." He leaned back in the stone chair. "Your work so far has been very . . . satisfactory." He paused to look down at her.

          She was very still, her head still bowed and overshadowed by her wings. Myotismon's face was unreadable. But, Demidevimon shivered slightly, could it be fear he had seen flashing briefly in his Master's eyes, or was it just the flicker of the torches? 

          "What shall we call you, hm?" Myotismon asked her pleasantly, something Demidevimon had learned to identify as Myotismon at his worst. "Would you tell me what you wish to be called?" 

          If this girl - if you could still call her that - was who he thought she was, then she was reacting very well to this question. 

          "I no longer have a name. You may call me what you will."

          "Hmmm." Myotismon paused and seemed to consider this for a moment. "You are clearly not a Digimon, but you are not clearly anything else. So I shall call you something clearly not Digimon, and clearly nothing else." 

          The silence in the room grew thick enough to tread on.

          "Myangela."

          With this dismissal, she bowed her head low and slipped away into the shade and shadows.   

–  –  –


	4. Between Alpha and Omega (( strange wind ...

Between Alpha and Omega

By, Esmee                       Concept by, Tenshi no Yuma

–  –  –

           All around me are familiar faces

                      Worn out places, worn out faces

                      Bright and early for their daily races

                      Going nowhere, going nowhere

                      And their tears are filling up their glasses

                      No expression, no expression

                      Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow

                      No tomorrow, no tomorrow

           And I find it kind of funny

                      I find it kind of sad

                      The dreams in which I'm dying

                      Are the best I've ever had

                      I find it hard to tell you

                      'Cos I find it hard to take

                      When people run in circles

                      It's a very, very

                      Mad World

           Children waiting for the day they feel good

                      Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

                      Made to feel the way that every child should

                      Sit and listen, sit and listen

                      Went to school and I was very nervous

                      No one knew me, no one knew me

                      Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson

                      Look right through me, look right through me

_                      'mad world'_

_                      ~Tear For Fears_

0.

          In the begining, when I first became, I was furious.

          I will not say, 'When I was reborn.' because I did not die, nor will I say, 'When I was made.' or 'When I came into being.' for to be made implies that I was waiting to be shaped into what I am now - which I was_ not - and to, 'come into being' implies that I was nothing before this form, which is also incorrect._

          So you see 'became' _is the best word to describe what happened._

          Anyway, when I first became, I was furious.

          Furious at my Master for tricking me.

          Furious at myself for believing him.

          Then, when I had calmed down somewhat, I realized that he _hadn't tricked me at all. All he had said was that he would make me stronger, and he had._

          I was furious at myself again. This time for not being smarter, more cautious, anything.

          So I raged up and down the corridors for a long time, not caring where I went or who heard me.

          When I finally paused in my blind raging, I found myself in front of a door unknown to me - which was rare considering how well I had come to know these dim hallways.

          Looking at it, I remember feeling a wild hope rise in my heart.

          I was very foolish then, I honestly thought that there was a way of turning back, of escape.

          How very, very, naive I was.

          I pushed open the door to see . . . nothing but a small, dusty room with a large rectangular mirror hanging on the wall facing me. A sputtering torch hung on either side.

          I remember feeling a wave of - disappointment? Resentment? Hopelessness? Perhaps it was a combination of all three - hit me so hard that I felt ill.

          But, looking at the mirror, I became curious. What did I look like now? I wondered.

          So I stepped closer to the mirror.

          I was about half a meter away from it, and even from there I could see that the edges were very finely engraved. I couldn't tell what was engraved on it, it was covered in too much dust, but I wasn't interested in that.

          I do not remember clearly what I felt as I wiped the dust from the mirrors surface, but I remember after.

          Yes, I remember after.

          As I peered into the depth of the glass, the part of me that was still - human is the only term that really fits -recoiled in disgust, and perhaps horror.

          I had known that I had changed, I had known from the first moment, but I was unaware of just how much I had changed.

          My clothing had changed from the red dress I had been wearing, to a long skirt of stormy-gray; it flowed and billowed about me. It had splits in the front to allow me more freedom of movement, I guess. Underneath was a shorter skirt of a material that started out pale gray (at my waist) and faded into a darker gray, stopping mid-thigh.

           I wore boots made of the same cloth as the over-skirt, the one on my left leg stopped just above my knee, and the one on my right leg, at my knee. There were knee-guards at each knee, made of a black metal and edged with silver; a large deep green jewel (beryl I think) was set in each guard. A slender band of the same black metal edged with silver (the clasp was a small silver ring, a fine chain about the length of a finger joint hung with a tiny, round green gem from it) encircled my left thigh, just above the knee, holding up the cloth of the boot. Around each ankle were guards; black, edged with silver, and set with green gems.

          The skirt was caught up by a belt of black metal edged in silver that widened on my left hip, to become a metal plate as wide as my palm, veined through with silver and set with a green gem.

          My torso was wrapped in the same stormy-gray cloth as my skirt and boots, with a girdle of the black metal (edged in silver, of course) around my ribs. There was a black and silver shoulder-guard on my right shoulder, the obligatory green gems set on the crest and by the clasp to the guard on my right breast. Hanging from the shoulder-guard was a long piece of charcoal-colored cloth.

          On the bicep on my left arm was a slender silver armband with a small green stone set as the clasp, and on my left wrist sat a black and silver wrist-brace.

          On my right arm was a glove that covered only the back of my hand and stopped mid-forearm. The glove was gray, and another green gem was set on the back of the glove.

           Those changes I had already known about (how could I not? All I had to do was look down to see them), what I hadn't known about were the physical changes.

          Or had I? I think that deep inside myself I already knew what had happened, but didn't want to admit it.

          My hair, once a sugary brown, was now a tarnished silver-white in color.

         On my left cheek was a small green tattoo, shaped like a raindrop - or perhaps, as I like to think, a tear drop - with an infinite circle inside. Infinite tears. How fitting for the crimes that I would commit.

          I think that, perhaps, I could have stood that or at least, learned to stand it over time. They were nothing more than cosmetic changes really. But rising from my back - just above my shoulder blades - were two huge wings.

          They were taller than me by a head and were very black; a disturbing, dark parody of true angel wings.

          Only my eyes were still the same, and yet, as I stared at the, the _thing, in the mirror that was now me, they were even more alien than the rest of me._

          I do not remember leaving the room, but I remember looking down at my hands and seeing them covered in blood and shards of glass.

**((CHAPTER IV: STRANGE WIND))**

1.

          The house was traditionally built with a large garden and koi pond. From the wooden bridge to the black lacquer and rice paper doors, it was a perfectly ordinary - albeit beautiful - house and grounds. Ordinary that is until you realized that instead of birds flitting swiftly through the yard, brightly colored fish did the flitting and that the air had a peculiar blue-green tinge to it, like water. But then, with an owner as unique as this house has, it's to be expected.

          Upon entering the house you would find a large mostly empty room, with several doors opening off it. If you took the door to your right, you would end up in a slightly smaller room with even less in it than the first room. It was a rectangle, with a small window in one end and on the wall opposite another door. A fair sized desk sat near the window and faced the back wall, a large cushioned chair stood behind it. Beside these two articles of furniture, part of the wall facing you is covered in bookcases jammed full with old and new books, sheets upon sheets of printouts, and numerous ancient crumbling scrolls. The rest of the wall was covered in a large screen. If you looked at the desktop, you would see a rather large panel, which looked like a cross between a computer keyboard and the controls of a game console. And if you were to enter that room at this moment you would also see an old man dressed in wine-colored robes edged in gold trim, putting away one of the older scrolls and looking older and grimmer than was warranted.      

          Grimacing, Gennai lowered himself into the chair. He closed his eyes and sighed in relief as his aching bones relaxed. _I'm getting too old for these wars. Much, much too old._

          "Surely you're not tired yet Old Man?" An all too cheery voice taunted.

          Gennai cracked open an eye at the Digimon crouched on his window-still. "So you've finally decided to grace me with your presence, have you Alopexusmon?" He said with a dry chuckle.

          The fore mentioned Alopexusmon wore a positively devilish grin as he jumped gracefully to the floor. "We~ll," He drawled. "I got bored and I had nothing else to do, so I thought I would do you the favor of allowing you to bask in _my magnificence."_

          Gennai allowed himself the luxury of a rough bark of laughter. "Tell me Alopexusmon, do you have to work hard to keep so self-centered or is it natural?"

          "Eh." He shrugged. "It's hard work being me, Gennai."

          "I'm sure." Gennai said blandly.

          "Anyway," Alopexusmon said briskly, dropping the banter. "Your message was very brief, what do you require?"

          "An end to this foolish war would be nice." He muttered, and then sighed. There was so much he needed to know, but now was not the time. "Where to start." Where to start indeed. Should he inform Alopexusmon first of the loss of the [ Sincerity ] and it's [ Carrier ]? Or perhaps he should ask for a report first, it would be wise to know how far along in his plans Myotismon was . . .

          "I need a drink." Gennai mumbled, getting up and leaving a very confused Alopexusmon behind. He shuffled through his workroom, but just as he was about to exit a flash of light caught him eye. He turned around, didn't see anything, shrugged and entered the kitchen. 

          "Yo, Gennai." Alopexusmon called from the workroom. "What is this thing, and is it s'posta glow like this?"

          Gennai gave a long-suffering sigh and hurried out of the kitchen. "Alopexusmon haven't I always told y-" But the rebuke died on his lips as he saw what the Digimon was holding. With a speed that surprised even himself, Gennai darted over and snatched the glowing crest from Alopexusmon's hands. "It can't . . . This isn't . . . It shouldn't . . ." He muttered numbly.

          "Gennai, you're scaring me." Alopexusmon said uneasily. "What is it?"

          Gennai paid him no attention as his thoughts raced one another. _It's not supposed to be able to work! It was the [Broken Crest], it's not possible. For it to glow is . . .! Gennai stared at the steady amber light that pulsed in the crest with disbelief. __It's summoning a [Carrier] for it's self!? But we thought it was a failed crest and didn't make a Digimon for it, but now it comes to life? How can it? It needs both a [Carrier] and a Digimon to work! Then a thought struck him. __The [Sincerity] must have been destroyed, that's__ why this crest is reacting! With the loss of [Sincerity] we have one less crest than the [Prophecy] requires . . . so the [Broken Crest] must be used! Now all we need is the [Light] . . . which Myotismon has._

_           "Report, Alopexusmon!" He snapped. "What are Myotismon's current activities?"_

         _ Alopexusmon, startled at the urgency of his tone, took a deep breath and looked at Gennai warily. Gennai was __not going to be happy with this report. "His activities are minimal, but there have been rumors . . ." He trailed off unsure of just what to tell Gennai._

          "Of?" Gennai snapped with barely concealed impatience.

          "There has been talk of some power other than Myotismon's."

          "What does this have to do with anything?"

          "Well, at first I thought it was just that; talk. To make sure, I went to check the rumors out where they could be proven - the village where the they started - and there was nothing."

          "Nothing as in, no truth to them?"

          "No." Alopexusmon shook his head emphicly. "Nothing as in _there was no village. There was nothing there, it was as if the [ Hand ] of Omegamon himself had wiped it off the face of the world."_

          "Sweet Alphamon . . ." Gennai breathed softly. "That's not possible, even Apocolymon doesn't have that type of power, trapped behind the barrier as he is. Surely you're mistaken . . .?" 

          "That was what I had thought at first too, but then I found a badly wounded Tanemon. I took care of him as best I could, but he didn't even live an hour after I found him."   

          "Did he say anything?"

          "Oh yes, he said a lot of things. All of them _unintelligible. He was raving mad Gennai. Ranting garbled words as he twitched and convulsed on the ground, there was only one thing he said that I was able to understand and _that_ didn't make any sense."_

          "Well?" Gennai growled. "What was it?"

          " 'Dark wings'." Alopexusmon said simply. "He said, 'Dark wings' and he died."

          " 'Dark wings' . . . ?" Gennai frowned. Why was that familiar? He would have to find out more about that term. "If that is all of your report Alopexusmon, then I have som-"

          "That's not all I have to report." He interrupted. "Myotismon has also withdrawn his orders to enter the Human World to look for the Eighth Child."

          "WHAT?!" Gennai shouted, making Alopexusmon wince. "Why didn't you tell me this immeaditly?!"  

          "Look," Alopexusmon said hurriedly. "I just forgot about it for a moment. This is good news right? I mean it will give us more time to prepare and get to the Child first, right?"

          "You're absolutely sure this isn't a ruse of some sort?"

          He nodded. "At first I thought it was to good to be true too, but he gave this order almost two weeks ago now. Some of his soldiers are saying that he's afraid of this new power out there and that why he's withdrawn the orders, but others are saying it's because this new power is _his and he doesn't need the Eighth Child anymore because of it. I agree with the latter."_

          Gennai sagged visibly and pressed a hand over his eyes as he assimilated this piece of news. _'Almost two weeks ago'? The [Sincerity] was lost two weeks ago, surely it's just a coincidence. Sweet Mother Alphamon please__ say it's just a coincidence! _

_          Alopexusmon looked at him sharply. "You wouldn't happen to know __why Myotismon suddenly withdrew orders that he had been preparing for months before hand, now, would you Gennai?"_

          "Can you tell me precisely when," Gennai asked faintly. _It's just a coincidence . . . "The orders where given and when you were suppose to have left for the Human World?"_

          "Um," Alopexusmon made some quick mental calculations. "We were suppose to have left for the Human world fourteen days ago and the order to withdraw was given twelve, thirteen days ago I think. Hey Gennai you okay? You turned really white just then."

          Gennai suddenly felt very ill. "You're sure?"

          "Yes." Alopexusmon said baffled and becoming increasingly alarmed.

          There was a cold lump in the bottom of his stomach and he was feeling more and more nauseated. _All this time I've been leading them into a trap. Every place I sent them he knew, he must have been waiting for the perfect moment to attack. All this time! He knew, all this time he must have known. Sweet Alphamon I betrayed them! I lead them into this attack . . . "We lost the [ Sincerity ] and it's [ Carrier ] Alopexusmon."_

          "WHAT?!" It was the Digimon's turn to shout. "When did this happen?"

          "Almost two weeks ago," He said dully, using Alopexusmon's own wording. "We lost the [ Sincerity ] and it's [ Carrier ] almost two weeks ago."

          "Holy Sweet Mother Alphamon." Alopexusmon swore in a round oath, looking as ill as Gennai felt.

          "Yes, Alopexusmon we'd better pray," He looked down at the pulsing amber glow of the crest in his hands. "But right now we must plan." As if in agreement the crest's glow grew brighter.

2.

          The warm light that penetrated the trees became a rich mosaic of colors where it fell on the forest floor, like splashes of paint some inspired abstract painter had thrown down in a fit of brilliance creating a pattern that only he understood. Jyou found peace was obtainable here, as he walked through trees that looked like they were carved from gems. He found it both pleasant and disturbing to be left alone with his thoughts for any period of time. He cast around for some firewood that he could take back to camp so it would appear like he was doing something useful, and not just wandering aimlessly around the forest trying to alleviate guilt. 

          "Can I ask a favor of you?"

          Jyou squinted up at Sora, from where he was crouched on the ground trying to pry a stubborn piece of dead wood from an entanglement of vines. "Sure." He said standing up and dusting off his hands. "Ask away."

          A huge smile of relief lit up her face. "Thanks, you have no idea how much I need your help."

          "I aim to please." Jyou smiled slightly. "Now, what do you need?"

          Her smile vanished and a troubled light appeared in her eyes. "I need you to talk to Yamato."

          "Me?" He raised an eyebrow.

          "Yes you." The younger girl made a frustrated gesture. "You're his best friend, surely you can talk him in to sharing his watches. Yamato's exhausted, he needs rest! Anyone can see that, why not him?"

          Jyou wanted to say; _maybe he knows that if he gave himself time rest he wouldn't be able to stop remembering, that's why he keeps himself exhausted. But he kept the thought to himself. He could see Sora's point though, but he didn't think that he was the right person to ask and said as much. "Look I really don't think I'm the right person for this, you should ask someone else to ta-"_

          "You don't understand," She pleaded. "You are the only person I _can ask. I can't ask Taichi, he's more likely__ to antagonize Yamato into a fight than convince him to share his watch."_

          _True. Jyou thought dryly. __Though they are__ friends, Taichi would probably say something__ the wrong way - unwittingly of course - and Yamato would most likely jump at the chance to fight. And I truly doubt Taichi would back down either, he'd welcome it I think. Physical pain to counter mental._

          "Koushiro - though he's smart and might_ be able to talk Yamato into sharing his watch - is have a hard time coping with," Sora had to pause and swallow slightly before continuing. "Her death."_

          _And it's doubtful you could get him away from his computer long enough for him to really talk to Yamato. He much prefers the virtual world of which he is god, than the real one in which he is nothing more than human. He thought with abnormally dark humor._

          "The same can be said for Takeru."

          _Very true. Jyou thought soberly. Takeru had been waking up screaming for the past two weeks, but refused to talk about the dreams that woke him up, sweating and shivering by turns and screaming for help. _

          "I can't ask the Digimon. Agumon won't leave Taichi's side,"

          _Even a leader needs someone to lead him at times._

          "I won't ask Patamon - Takeru needs him,"

          _As he should when he won't talk about these dreams to anyone else in more than monosyllable answers. _

          "Tentomon is glued to Koushiro's side,"

          _He reminds Koushiro that he needs to eat and breathe; though I'm sure Koushiro would argue that point._

          "And I'm sure Gabumon would've already talked to Yamato if he'd had the chance, but he's too busy with Palmon,"

          _She needs all the supports she can grab. Gabumon is willing to be one._

          "And Gomamon seems to be too."

          _And so is Gomamon. It was all too true, but she'd left out two people. "What about you and Biyomon?" He asked softly._

          "We tried already!" She shouted, nearly in tears. "He just ignored us! You're the only one I can ask, out of all of us you are the calmest and least effected-"

          "Is that what you think?" Jyou interrupted suddenly, ridged with anger and hurt. "That I'm not as effected as the rest of you by Mimi's death? 'Good old Jyou doesn't care, let's ask him to do it,' is that what you think?!"_  _

          "No!" Sora said clearly distressed. "I didn't mean-"

          "Well let me tell you something," He glared at her, not letting her speak. "Not a moment of the day goes by that I _don't think about her, that I don't think 'what if'. What if I had noticed Yamato before Mimi did? What if instead of standing like a half-wit as Myotismon attacked I had done something? I __dread what I going to have to tell her family! And don't even bother trying to tell me that I not responsible. Despite what Taichi says about being the leader, __I am the oldest and am therefore responsible for protecting and looking after the younger children in the group, and I __could not protect her, Sora! I just stood there and let it happen, I couldn't-" He broke off abruptly, fumbling with his glasses as he rubbed a knuckle across his eyes._

          Sora had a stricken look on her face. "Jyou, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

          "It doesn't matter." He interrupted brusquely, not looking at her, feeling ashamed at his outburst but still hurt at what she'd implied. "I'll talk to Yamato, for all the good it will do."  

          Sora held her hand out in silent entreaty, beseeching him to forgive her.

          Jyou barely glanced at her as he brushed past her.

3.

          Gomamon walked over to where Palmon sat huddled in on herself next to a topaz-colored stream. "You okay Palmon?" He asked gently, once in hearing range.

          "What do you think? Would _you be 'okay' if Jyou died?!" She snarled then stalked off, leaving a stunned Gomamon staring after her dumbly. _

          "I was only asking how she was," he muttered, slightly hurt by his friend's reaction. _It's only natural though after what happened, I don't even want to think how it would be if Jyou died! He shivered slightly at the thought. If Jyou died it would feel like half his soul was missing. Not a pleasant feeling._

          "Don't take it personally, she's been like that to everyone today." Gabumon said coming up behind him, garnet eyes dark with worry. "She just needs time, that's all. She'll be fine soon. She just needs time."

          To Gomamon, the soft reassurances seemed to be for Gabumon as much as himself. "Yes," he agreed. "She needs time, but how much time do we really have left?"

          A strange warm wind like the one on the day the children came swirling about the two, running long fingers through their fur and catching up fallen leaves, making them dance madly. A chaotic vortex of ruby, amber, violet and emerald.

          "Do we have any time left at all?" He whispered.      

4.

          "Hey Agumon," Sora greeted the small orange dinosaur. "Have you seen Biyomon? I really need to talk to her." The talk with Jyou had upset her badly. Out of all of them she had considered Jyou to be the most stable, the calm logical adult among them. The rock in the storm, if you will. That he was just as confused, angered, and saddened as the rest of them pulled a large piece of her foundation out from under her. It wasn't that she had thought he wasn't upset by Mimi's death, just that he was in more control. In a strange way the fact that this upset him scared her, almost the same way a child feels scared if they see their parent crying. Right now she just wanted to curl up in Biyomon's wings and have a good cry.

          "She's talking to Taichi." Agumon replied, a troubled glint in his emerald eyes. "I'm worried about him Sora, he's not sure of himself anymore. He doesn't think he can lead anymore."  

          Sora rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling cold despite the tropically warm wind that flowed around them. Though she couldn't put a finger on it, there was something strange and familiar about it. "Oh Agumon," she whispered helplessly. "What are we going to do?"

5.

          Jyou found Yamato sitting underneath a large ruby-leafed tree that overlooked the smoky-gold stream. The sunlight spilling through the leaves was bloody and pearly, creating an abstract stained-glass pattern on the ground that shifted into some new design whenever the wind harped through the branches. 

          "You look awful." Jyou said bluntly, as way of greeting.

          Yamato looked up resentful that his self-imposed solitude was being invaded, but the resentment faded when he saw it was Jyou. Yamato _did look awful though; his lapis lazuli eyes were ringed in dark circles that only added emphasis to the pallor of the rest of his face. "Thanks man, I really needed that." The weary sarcasm in his voice a pale shadow of his normally biting tongue. _

          "Where's Takeru?" Jyou asked as he lowered himself to the ground beside Yamato.

          Yamato closed his eyes and leaned back against the rough cinnamon-colored bark of the tree letting the warm, strangely familiar smelling wind blow his hair into airy spikes. He absently frowned as he tried to name the smells. _Sage maybe? Or ginger? Beeswax defiantly, and vanilla too. "He's taking a nap, Patamon's with him. He's been having trouble sleeping."_

          Neither talked after that.

6.

          Eighteen days, ten hours and thirty-seven minutes.

          That was how long ago she had died right in front of his eyes and, coincidently, that was also how long ago he had started researching Myotismon.

          Eighteen days, ten hours and thirty-eight minutes.

          Not that he was _counting, goodness no! He just happened to have a very, very good memory. He was not counting the minutes since one of his friends had been brutally murdered right in front of him, as he just stood there like an idiot, of course not. _

          Eighteen days, ten hours and thirty-nine minutes. 

          Tentomon was sitting next to him as he had for the past eighteen days unnaturally quiet and grim, not making any of his customary snide quips or sarcastic remarks. It was still hard to believe - inconceivable really - but he had seen it with his own eyes so he had to believe it, no matter how much he wanted to disbelieve it. 

          Koushiro scowled darkly as he came to another dead-end. "All we know is that Myotismon is a virus-type Digimon and a powerful one at that! How can we fight something if we don't know more about it?" He growled, clearly frustrated and feeling ready to throw his laptop into the stream.

          "Calm down Koushiro," Tentomon soothed. "I'm sure-"

          "–That you can figure out whatever it is later," the gravely voice of Gennai broke in. "At the moment I need to talk to all of the Chosen. Now."

7.

          Gennai surveyed the children and Digimon like a general surveying his troops, which if you looked at it, was what they were really. "There are only really two main issues you need to know," he began. "The first is this; one of my informants has recently brought to my notice that several villages on File Island have be destroyed completely."

          "Completely . . . ?" A no-longer sleepy Patamon whispered.

          "Completely." Gennai affirmed. "There is nothing left where these villages stood, not even rubble. Among these was Primary Village." Gennai saw the shock on the children's faces and the horror on the Digimon's. But he wasn't done yet; it got worse. He smiled darkly. Much worse.

           "Who did this?" Yamato asked softly. 

           Gennai looked at the boy sharply.

           "Yes Gennai, who did it?" Jyou asked as he pushed his glasses up his nose with his forefinger. "It wasn't Myotismon, if he'd had that kind of power earlier I'm sure he wouldn't have hesitated to use it against us, therefore it must be someone else."

           Gennai nodded slowly, approvingly. The boy was sharp. "You're right, it isn't Myotismon. My informant thinks he might have a new subordinate and I agree."

           "But you don't know for certain? Why?" Taichi queried.

          _Here it comes. Gennai thought grimly, as he shrugged helplessly. "No one has survived any of the attacks, there was one Digimon who got away but he died only an hour after he was found. He was incoherent and the only thing we got from him before he died was 'Dark wings'. So the only thing we really know is that it is powerful, more powerful than Myotismon we think."_

           "What does this have to do with us? Do you want us to go after it?" Koushiro asked impatient to get back to his laptop. 

           "Alphamon no!" Gennai said alarmed. "I want you to keep as far away from this thing as possible! You are to avoid all possible contact with it. Now the second thing you need to know is this; the [ Prophecy ] foretells of the coming of the [ Eight ]. The last time I contacted you it was to tell you of the existence of an Eighth child, but unfortunately we have lost a crest and it's [ Carrier ] so we shall now require two more children. By sheer luck I happen to have one of the crests, I believe the only reason we can use it at all is because of the destruction of [ Sincerity ]." He held up the glowing crest. "It is summoning it's [ Carrier ]. I don't know where or when the [ Carrier ] will appear, but it should be somewhere near you. Once you get the child _come directly to me. That's an order._

           "Unfortunately we still have a slight problem, there is no Digimon created for this crest so I will have to ask Palmon to act as the Digimon for the new child-"

           "You expect me to _replace Mimi with someone else?!" Palmon hissed, glaring at him harshly. "You expect me to just __forget about her and play happy Digimon for whatever __Omegamon-touched child you're going to replace her with?! How dare-"_

           _"Palmon! Be still!" Gennai snapped. "There is __no other choice. If there was I would use it but there __isn't. I wish to Alphamon there was. __But. There. Isn't. Beside the crest I hold, Myotismon has one. My informant - Alopexusmon - is in the process of acquiring it." He paused and surveyed the children and Digimon once more, looking each in the eye for emphasis. " You are to lay low, do __not go after Myotismon. Do __not confront what ever this new power is. Once you find the new [ Carrier ], __come directly to me. You have no chance of winning against either Myotismon__ or his new toy at this time. Understood?"_

           "Understood." Taichi said finally, speaking for everyone after it became apparent that no one else was going to answer.

           "When you find the new [ Carrier ] come to me immeaditly. Do not stop for anything." Gennai warned a final time, and then blinked out.

8.

          The young boy looked up at the hot blue sky. He couldn't have been more than eight, though he was tall for his age. He was slim and was often teased for having a 'girly' face. Dark hair fell in a soft fringe over large, wide set brandy-colored eyes with impossibly long dark lashes, that adults often assumed were angelic missing the wicked twinkle in their depth.

          He appeared to be staring at something in the perfectly clear sky that arched overhead like the inside arc of a robin's egg, white-hot blue. He knew something was going to happen today, he could feel it. Power was coiled in the air around him, making everything appear sharper, clearer. A strange wind - warm and dry that smelled like beeswax, vanilla, and something else familiar - wrapped around him ruffling his hair and caressing his face.

          With his face still upturned, he held out his hand and caught the small cold white snowflake that drifted down from a summer sky so hot and blue it vibrated. High in the blue-white dome above him a pinpoint of dark amber light, like a tiny perihelion, appeared.

9.

          Hikari looked up wistfully into the sky, from where she leaned on the balcony rail, thinking of her brother. She wished desperately that she knew how her brother and his friends were, whether he was hurt or happy or whatever!

          "Please be okay and come back soon, please."

          No cloud marred the skyline, so she could see quite far away. The sky was the same blue-white color as the hottest part of a flame. She watched as a point of light the color of dark amber appeared high in the sky. It grew brighter until it was impossible to look directly at it, then it slowly faded away like a dying sun.   

          "Please be okay . . . Please."

          Meko meowed for attention and rubbed up against her ankle, and twining around her legs, while a strange wind tugged at her shirt and played with her hair. 

          "Please."

10.

          Evening came around to find Palmon still wrathful at what Gennai had said and asked her to do, and Taichi didn't blame her –he'd felt like raging at Gennai too and from the looks some of the other had been giving Gennai they did as well. It was surprising he hadn't gone up in flames from the glares he had been getting.

          Taichi sighed as he returned to the more pressing matter on his mind. _Can I protect them from this new threat? __I sure didn't protect Mimi, and this thing is s'post to be even stronger than Myotismon. He thought bleakly. Would he be able to protect his friends from it? He had to; he couldn't stand to lose anyone else._

          "Koushiro," he started to ask, still thinking along those lines, "do you–" But he was interrupted but the sound of someone screeching. Rather loudly too.

          "_AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," a pause came, as if for air, after which the screeching resumed. __"HHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"  _

           Looking up they could see a small dark dot marring the rich cloth of sky. Looking closely, one could see that the object was falling rather quickly and it also seemed to be the source of the screeching.

          "What is it? A crow?" Koushiro asked shading his eyes.

          "It seems to be getting closer," Tentomon stated.          

_          "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

          "It looks like a person." This was Takeru speaking.

          "It does, doesn't it?" Said Sora.           

_          "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

          "Do ya think it's the new kid?" Taichi asked squinting.

          "Gennai _did say the crest was summoning the next child and it would end up somewhere near us." Agumon remarked.         _

_         "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

          "You think we should, you know, try to catch it?" Biyomon asked uneasily.

          "It looks like it's doing fine." Gomamon shrugged easily.          

_          "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

          "I suppose we _should at least __try to help it." Palmon sighed reluctantly._

          "We should." Gabumon agreed staring up at the sky, unmoving.          

_         "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

          "You know, we should start moving if we want to help it." Jyou adjusted his glasses.

          "True." Yamato commented not moving.          

_         "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

          "It's a boy." Patamon said suddenly, while watching in fascination as the form grew bigger the closer it got to the ground.__

_          "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-"_

          The boy's screeching stopped abruptly as he disappeared into the top of a tree. They could hear muffled cracks as he hit the branches, and finally an audible 'THUMP!' as he found the ground.

          The group quickly made their way over to where the new boy had fallen. He sat up with groan and shook his head, as he brushed dirt and leaves off of his marigold colored shirt. Then he bounced to his feet, brushed his hair out of his eyes-          

_Brandy-colored eyes, amber eyes, Mimi's eyes . . ._

         -And grinned cheerily, albeit looking more than a little dazed. "Hullo there! I'm Kohaku Tachikawa, nice to meet ya."

–  –  –


	5. Between Alpha and Omega (( to sleep, to ...

Between Alpha and Omega

By, Esmee                       Concept by, Tenshi no Yuma

–  –  –

           Once I was

                     A seed,

                     Planted in an earthy womb.

           Once I was

                      A thief,

                      Stealing silent through the night.

           Once I was

                      Darkness,

                      Deep and endless, hiding many secrets.

           Once I was

                      A bird,

                      Gliding on winds of flight.

           Once I was

                      Wind,

                      Fanning  'cross your face.

           Once I was

                      Fire,

                      Consuming all in my path.

           Once I was

                      Wrath,

                      Raging blindly at the fates.

           Once, perhaps, I was

                      Alive,

                      Dreaming that I was.

_                     'I was'_

_                     ~Esme Waters_

0.

         I try not to sleep anymore, for 'to sleep: perchance to dream.' I've forgotten where I heard that quote. I knew it just a moment ago, but now I've forgotten.

          I seem to be forgetting a great many things, things that I somehow know I shouldn't forget. Faces with no voice, voices to which I cannot place a face; a man with a beautiful voice, a woman with kind eyes, a boy with a strong hand, they are all to me like a shadow of something remembered from a dream: pale and insubstantial as moonbeams.

          Not that this new body _needs sleep. But, as they say, old habits _are_ hard to break._

          But it's not sleep that I hate; it's the dreams that come with sleep.

          Well, I shouldn't say _hate for I no longer have emotions like that, but I remember hate. The sickly sweet taste that burns your stomach and leaves a bitter aftertaste._

          When I do sleep, either out of habit or boredom, dreams ghost through my mind. They are not always the same, but there are two that always come, that never change.

          In one, eyes haunt me, peering out through the pure blackness that prevents me from seeing anything else but their eyes. Familiar eyes, but I can never quite place them. Eyes made from chips of topaz or ruby. Eyes made from slices of onyx or jade. Eyes made from chunks of turquoise or emerald. Eyes made from crumbs of brown diamond or beryl. Eyes made from slivers of obsidian or garnet. Eyes made from shards of lapis lazuli. All of them piercing me through, accusing me of . . . what? Perhaps forgetting.

          But I can ignore this dream when I wake. I can push this dream aside as I follow my master's orders and forget it for a while, as I damn myself a little more deeply then I had the day before. I find the other dream more disturbing by far, for when I wake-up I can't ignore it.

          In this dream, too, I am in darkness.

          But, not simply _in this darkness, but __of this darkness, __with this darkness, __am this darkness. But it's not pure darkness either, there is light here and I am also __in this light, __of this light, __with this light, __am this light. I am both but neither, stuck where the purity of light becomes the purity of dark, stuck where the end of one becomes the begining of the other, holding it together like a seam of thread. Holding them together but apart. Preventing one from overwhelming the other and preventing one from running from the other._

          There is a voice there, saying things I can't hear or remember when I wake. Somehow, I know this voice is not one I knew as that child, but before. Long before.

          In this place where I stand in the middle, I can feel myself straining until I will be pulled asunder, until I will be pulled in two because I know I am not strong enough to hold them apart or together, like I am not fully formed; a bud not yet bloomed.

          I think the voice is trying to help me, but I can't hear what it's saying.

          Like a butterfly just emerged from its chrysalis with its wings wet and useless, it won't fly until it's wings dry and form fully, and I too won't hear this voice until I am fully formed.

          These are the dreams that I can't push away or ignore.

          They haunt me with gray ghosts and pale memories, calling out something I neither hear nor understand.

          Nor am I sure I want to.

**((CHAPTER V: TO SLEEP, TO DREAM))**

1.

          In this great universe of ours, there are many different factors that can lead to happening of certain events. Fate, destiny, chance, coincidence, accidents, decisions, luck, flukes, all are the things that allow twists in the road of life that would otherwise be smooth and straight and allowing one to see the near future and its people without obstacles. The most common of these occurrences is the last mentioned, the fluke. Without flukes our lives would be very simple, depriving us of the 'what if' factors in our life that more often than not shapes us into whom we are and whom we will become. 

          Yes, Myotismon reflected in the dusky and moldering room of state he had taken over as his own over the years, it was a fluke that had allowed him to catch those brats off guard. A fluke, a strange quirk of fate, or whatever you cared to call it; he didn't really care about that, only the fact that he had caught them off guard. And it was pure luck that he had caught one of them, especially one alive.

          Especially this child.

          Contrary to what all his subordinates believed, it had been pure hotheaded rage at the humiliating defeat he had suffered at those _children's_ hands that had made him go after them. That hot-headedness had often gotten him into trouble when he had been a tiro, but in this matter it had served him well for once. 

          He got up from the armchair covered in strips of rotting blood colored velvet that were held to the ancient mahogany by blackened brass bolts, and glided over to the large, dust and cobweb draped bookcase that dominated the west wall, part of his mind remembering a time when he had been summoned into this room as a tiny liber by the Archbishop of the castle, which had been a monastery then, to discuss his 'Behavior'. 

          He remembered standing in front of the huge ruby oak and copper wood desk, then all shiny and gleaming with the glow of a well cared for item, and waiting for the Archbishop to speak. He remembered how the rosy blush of the candles had plumbed the corners of the room, creating inviting niches and hidey-holes that one could hide away in. 

          He remembered how the Archbishop had made him wait until he had finished the document he had been writing. He remembered how he had kept glancing out of the corner of his eye at the Archbishop's bookcase, his hands aching to wander through the many rare and ancient volumes. 

          Now, he mused, I have them. All of them. All the books, and many others the Archbishop could only have dreamed about. Serves the old bastard right. 

          He idly let his fingers wander over the many dust covered, cracked leather bound books. Yes, He reflected again, it had been purely a stroke of luck that this child had still been alive. It had disturbed him though, that he should care whether or not the child was alive, he should have been happy either way, but . . . he remembered looking at the child's narrow face all covered in the black char and the dark blood, and remembering another face so pale next to a puddle of blood deep and bright in color, eyes glazed as they stared at nothing . . . 

          He could not let that happen again. 

          He rationalized it to himself by saying that the child was of more use alive than dead, but the plain truth of the matter was he could not let the child die because of the memory of another dead. He had laughed softly when she had woken up, a deep, depreciating laugh that he laughed to himself every time he saw her. A laugh that told him every time he laughed that he was an idiot plain and simple to have let his memory rule so much of his life.

          He hadn't really had a plan when he took the child. It had been a 'play it by ear' scenario, with some vague idea of casting a spell or fascination over her. But he found the idea of a spell or fascination distasteful. 

          He'd wanted, he'd wanted, Lair! He didn't know what he wanted, but it was not a coerced cooperation from the child. So he decided to try to extract a Soul-Binding from the child. It was the best tactic in the long run; a Soul-Binding binds the person whom makes the vow to you until you die. But he knew he had to proceed carefully about this; Soul-Bindings were a tricky matter at best, they required a level of utmost sincerity from the person making the vow and the utter truth from the person proposing the vow. 

          Then once he had a plan, he was stuck. He had had absolutely no idea how he was going to get the child so completely shattered that she would agree to make such a vow.

          And then Lady Fate dealt in his favor again.

          He had not wittingly left the door to the Speculum open for the child. And if the child had come one minute sooner or one minute later then who knows what might have happened, but she hadn't and what she saw shattered whatever tiny fragmented hope she had clung to since she had woken. 

          It was the perfect time.

          But, all he had planned to do with her after he had gotten the Soul-Binding from the child was to maybe imbue her with some small power or some such. He was totally unprepared for the explosive reaction he had gotten afterwards. 

          When the child had dully placed her delicately small hand with its torn and bloody knuckles into his large, calloused palm with its large capable fingers, he had a moment to feel triumph, not even Piedmon had gotten a [ Carrier ] to cross over, and wonderment at how small her hand looked in his, then he and the child were momentarily engulfed by a nimbus of green-white radiance, and when it lifted the child was no longer there. 

          It had shaken him to the core of his being to see the pale face surrounded by pale hair that then knelt across from him. 

          The girl-child was no more, but in her place was a being of familiar carriage and form. Not that it really looked like her anymore. It was taller, for one thing. Taller, but without the curves and growth that should accompany the sudden spurt into adulthood, keeping the lean angles of childhood. The only things that kept you from immeaditly assuming the gender of it, was it's face, a snowy oval with moist pale pink lips that were the only color on it besides it's brandy-colored eyes, and the stormy gray skirt it wore.

          They stared at each other for a long moment, the green tattoo on its cheek glowing faintly, and then it sprang up and ran, dark feathers luminescent as they were dragged through the dust and grime of the ancient corridors and pale hair intermittingly twisting between its shoulder blades and wings, and he stayed there, unable – or unwilling, he wondered now - to move or go after it.

          His fingers came to rest in their wanderings on the smooth binding of one of the books. It's cover of green leather was dull with time, but without the cracks and stains that marred the other volumes in the bookshelf; well cared for. He let his hand linger on the soft, stiff leather for a moment, tapered fingers caressing it almost reverently, and then opened it with a gentle caution few would have recognized coming from him. In fact, the one person whom would have recognized it was the author of the book he held and had been dead for years.

          Myotismon opened the old book, it's pages stiff and crumbling with time but still smelling of vanilla, beeswax, and rain, and stared down at the graceful script that cover the pages, still conveying some small essence of the writer. 

          Myotismon stood in one of the rotting room of the now dead monastery and read and remembered.

          Remembered a time so long ago it seemed like another lifetime. And in that other lifetime he remembered a young boy with pale hair laughing.

* * *

          " 'Long ago, when the World was still very young, and people still held some small amount of awe for it's mechanics, there were two types of beings whom inhabited it. They were the Digi and the Mon. 

          " 'Now, there was only one real difference that separated these two people from being one and the same. That difference is this; when a Digi dies, it's Data, though scattered, will eventually be summoned and recompiled at one of the Primary Seminariums in the villages all over both File Island and the continent of Server. 

          " 'But, when a Mon dies, though their Data scatters as well, theirs cannot be summoned and recompiled; it drifts away, becoming lost among the endless Data streams that make up our world-" 

          "But I know this already!" A rough voiced young man complained, interrupting the smooth, clear voice of the young man speaking. The Digi sitting next to him scowled at the rude youth fiercely. The other boy laughed.

          "Come now Gen," The youth mocked, chuckling lightly, "You didn't let me finish, that's bad manners you know. What would your mother say?" The fore mentioned 'Gen' grimaced and gave an exaggerated shudder at the mention of his mother. His mother was a fanatic about manners, unfortunately a trait not shared with the same enthusiasm by her son. 

          "But I _know_ this already; who doesn't since they," Gen jerked his head in the direction they had just come from, towards the temple, "Pound it into you once you're old enough to breathe." 

          "I know you know this," The other chided gentle.

          "Then why the Lair are you telling me this Angelus."

          The Digi's scowl deepened. He didn't like the way Gen was talking Angelus. Angelus glanced over at the Digi and noticed his dark frown. Angelus laughed.

          "Relax Miyomon," Angelus grinned, habitually pushing some pale hair away from his face before redirecting his attention to the other boy. "And I'm telling you this Gen because the Council has asked me to write the next Grimoire."

          Gen sat with a stupefied look on his face, jaw hanging open for a moment, then a huge grin lit up his face. "Way to go!" He crowed, pounding the other boy's shoulder joyfully. "I _knew_ those brains of yours had to have some use." He leaned back on his hands, grinning widely. "Ta think I'm best friends with the youngest Guardian ever."

          Angelus flushed faintly with pride. "Thanks."

          The two boys had always been a fascinating study of contrasts. One boy dark where the other was light. One boy short with a strong, wiry build, while the other is very tall and slim. One boy blunt and to the point, almost to a point of being rude in some cases, while the other subtle and eloquent. One boy's eyes gleamed sharply with curiosity; the other's glowed with visions and intelligence. Both hungering after something, one after skill, the other knowledge. A curious pair indeed.

          And then, of course, there was the Digi with them; it wasn't often that one saw a Virus-type with Temple children.

          "So," Gen asked, chewing on a piece of the long, champaign colored grass that cover the hill. "Have any idea when you're going to start the Grimoire?" 

          "Elder Jessiah said whenever 'Felt' right to me." Angelus said with a careless shrug, idly shedding a piece of the long light grass between his fingers. "I haven't 'Felt' the pull yet, but I'll know it when I do, and I'll know when the proper time to start is."

          The three children lounged on the grassy knoll over looking the temple shining a dusty gold in the evening light. They were each trying to escape from certain duties or tasks that they found less than pleasant, and had found each other atop the small hill with its grass the shade of champaign with the bright sun bringing out a deeper, richer color in it. They stayed there, in the warm light, each idly wishing they would never have to go back to the boring and repetitive jobs that were their responsibilities, each escaping into their own private daydream for a short time. 

          Angelus stretched languidly, feeling happy and slightly drunk with the warmth of the sun and the rare, friendly camaraderie that had come over his best friend and his Bonded digi; it was very rare for them to get along for such a length time without at least one of them antagonizing the other into a fight.  "Miyo," He asked softly, trying not to break the mood that clung to them with all the fragility of an old cobweb. "How're Dano and Fenixmon?" It was an innocent enough question, Angelus hadn't heard from his friend and _his_ Virus-type Bonded in since they had left the week before. Dano and Fenix were the only other Bonded Virus-type in the area.

          Miyomon stiffened and stared straight ahead, shuttering his emotion away behind a blank face. "I don't know how they are, they haven't tried to contact us since they left 'Elus." He felt a lump start to form in his throat. His voice sounded harsh to his ears. "But a new ovum appeared in the village's Primary Seminarium."

          Angelus immeaditly reached out and loosely wrapped his arms around the digi as he said, "I'm sorry Miyo," Miyo nodded his head stiffly inside the protective circle of his Bonded's, he had an almost over whelming need to let some of the tears that had made his pillow damp for the past few day fall swiftly on Angelus' ivory and green clad shoulder. But, he reminded himself; he could not show such weakness in front of that turd Gen. He gently pulled himself out from the warm circle of Angelus' arms.

          "Just because a new ovum appeared in the Seminarium it doesn't mean that they died." Angelus continued softly, placing fine boned hand on his shoulder. 

          "I know." He lied as he leaned his pale lavender cheek against Angelus' hand. He had seen the egg; it was Fenix's. It had had the same pattern and coloring as the virus type digimon's Birth Mark. The bastards got another one of us, he thought bitterly; they're going to hunt us down, not caring how many of their own people they kill in the process. 

          Behind them they heard Gen snort and say something lightly under his breath. Miyomon sprang up and whirled around to face the mon. "You want to say something?" He challenged the boy, voice sharp and eyes blazing.

          "Just good riddance to bad rubbish if they are truly dead," The youth tilted his chin up arrogantly. "The less Virus-type digi there are, the better."

          Miyomon snarled and had an almost overpowering urge to pound the little glitch into a bloody smear on the ground, but didn't because Angelus had 'feelings' for the little error. Mores the pity.

          "You should watch your mouth Gennai, it might get you into trouble one of these days." Angelus said in a quiet, even, civil tone. Miyomon shifted away from Angelus slightly; it was _not_ wise to be around him when he used that tone of voice, especially if you wanted to live long enough to have a family.

          Gennai had the grace to look faintly ashamed; a dusting of pink darkened his freckled cheekbones, but he was unrepentant. "I didn't mean _you_ Angelus, it's not your fault you're Bonded to a Vipe."  

          Miyomon snapped. First that little bastard insults his friends, and then that little bastard insults Angelus. "You–" He made a flying leap at Gennai . . . only to be grabbed by the collar by Angelus. 

          "Miyomon! Be still." He watched as Miyomon snarled again and stalked off a few feet. Then he turned to Gennai. "I think you should get back to the temple, Gennai." 

          Gennai looked surprised at the coldness in his friend's voice. "But–"

          "I have neither need nor want of your bigotry." Angelus turned away from him. "You can leave now." 

          Gennai got up and went around to face Angelus. The other boy glared at him stony eyed. 

          "But, I–"

          "Go."

          The dark Digi and the light Mon watched the boy trudge down the hill towards the coldly gleaming temple, looking very forlorn. 

          "Thank you 'Elus." The Digi said softly, knowing it must've hurt his Bonded greatly to be so unforgiving to the other boy.

          The Mon grinned slightly though his eyes stayed dark with some unnamable emotion, and tousled the digi's dark blond hair. "You are welcome Arbitratus."

* * *

          In Myotismon mind's eye, he could see the face of the pale young Mon, just as he had last seen him; hair pulled back in a slightly messy looking braid, a few strands falling lose from it to frame the snowy oval of his face with his amber eyes as bright as a glass of brandy in the sunlight.

          Slowly it changed. Slowly it became younger and more feminine.

          There was only one prayer that had ever really struck him when he was a liber, and then when he was a tiro it had been the only one he could ever remembered. It was a prayer for forgiveness, and it had been the only prayer that he had ever thought actually meant something. 

          Myotismon closed his eyes and tried to pray. "Mea culpa . . . Adiudico tuus possess venia Mater matris Alphamon, Genitor Omegamon . . . Mea culpa, ignosco meus culpa . . . " 

          He prayed, though he knew that neither of the Divine Twins would design to answer him. They didn't listen to him anymore; hadn't for a long time.

          So he prayed to the only person who had ever listened to him, the only person who had ever wanted to hear him.

          "Mea culpa, Mea culpa Angelus . . . Adiudico tuus possess venia . . . Mea culpa, ignosco meus culpa . . . "

2.

          Night in the Digiworld was always spectacular. There were never clouds to block the view of the multicolored stars hanging in the sky, they were bright and shining and scattered across the bruise colored sky like someone had crushed all the most beautiful gemstones they could find in to a fine powder and crumbs and then tossed great handfuls up in the air in abandon. And it was always so dark, no silver moon cast her coldly loving gaze upon the world, making any fire made seem much more brilliant and vibrant than it would be normally. Noises also seemed louder, clearer, and more defined than they did in the real world. Every snap of a twig or shudder of a branch was more defined and normally had the effect of violently startling travelers. 

          And they would have normally had the same effect on the small group of Chosen that were camped under the expansive cover of the gem colored trees now dark with nighttime shadows. But this time they had something more immediate to deal about than miscellaneous noises, some_one_ more immediate to deal with actually, namely Tachikawa Kohaku. 

          The amber-eyed boy had isolated himself from the others since . . . earlier, and refused to talk to anyone save to insult them for their cowardice, something none of them felt very able to respond to.

          In truth they all secretly felt he was right and did not answer simply because they did not want to deal with the feelings of guilt and failure that he arose in them.

          But that is beside the point.

          The point is that when Kohaku is happy everyone around him is happy, much like his sister, and when he is not happy . . . well . . . that spills over as well. 

          _It's all Takeru's fault._ Yamato thought slightly resentfully as he rubbed his bruised and aching jaw were it was starting to turn a delightful mottled plum color. 

          Yamato did not look good in plum. 

          He glanced over were Jyou was tending to Taichi's fat lip, his own lips twitching a little in amusement, and then, covertly, over at the dark shadowed area were Kohaku was sitting. He winched and glanced away ashamed trying not to remember the painfully harsh and truthful words that had passed between them, but his mind would not shy away from their confrontation earlier. He grimaced, and then hissed in pain, as the expression pulled at the sore muscles in is cheek and jaw. That kid has a very strong punch for such a small fist. He thought ruefully, thinking back to earlier that day. "It's all Takeru's fault." He muttered aloud, but immediately felt guilty for saying that. There had been no way to tell how the kid would react to learning of his sister's death, and even if Takeru hadn't blurted it out to him while in hysterical, hiccupping tears, they would have had to tell him eventually. 

          At least it was out in the open now. He thought ruefully. His eyes searched for Palmon's pink and mauve petals and found them farthest away from Kohaku with Gabumon and Gomamon hovering near her worriedly. He started as he felt a hand suddenly on his shoulder.

          "Relax, it's just me."

          Yamato turned around to face Jyou holding the first-aid kit and looking slightly amused. "Jeez, you shouldn't sneak up on people." He said irritable.

          Jyou smiled, his eyes twinkling faintly with laughter at having caught the great Ishida Yamato off guard. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone that I caught the Great Ishida being spacey." He teased, taking a seat next to the younger boy. "Sorry for taking so long with Taichi, how's your jaw?"

          Yamato made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and leaned back on the cool grass. "It only hurts when I move it." He chuckled and then grimaced. "Who would've thought the kid would have such a good left hook?"

          Jyou shoved his glasses up his nose with his index finger, and started to pull out a small wad of disinfectant soaked cloth and some dry gauze. He then rummaged with one hand through the kit, looking for some normal bandages, and asked absently, "Do any of the cuts you got in the incident with Kohaku earlier still hurt? And what are you doing over here that is so absorbing that you didn't notice me 'Sneak up' on you, as you so eloquently put it?"

          Yamato sat up, and averted his gaze from Jyou. "Nah, there's just one on my forearm that still stings a little, but that's about it."

          "Mm hm, that's good, but you didn't answer my question." Jyou glanced at him only to see the younger boy's eyes turned away. He followed Yamato's line of sight to where a small form sat huddled in on it's self, far from the warm circle of the fire and what little comfort that could be offered. 

          "I wish there had been some other way to tell him." He murmured. 

          Yamato glanced at him briefly, "Is there any other way to tell someone that someone they loved is dead?"

          Jyou sighed and shook his head defeated. "You're right," He acknowledged. "Now let me see this cut of yours."

          Yamato turned to him and held out his right forearm. A long dirty red streak graced it from elbow to mid forearm. 

          "Rather nasty." Jyou mumbled adjusting his glasses and turning Yamato's arm to face the light a little more. "You really should take better care of yourself, this cut could become infected you know." He started to dab the scrape with the disinfectant. "This might sting a little." He warned.

          Yamato hissed slightly as the icy, numbing gel of the disinfectant touched his skin. 

          "I warned you," Jyou said absently. "Try to think of something else."

          Yamato obediently tried to think of something else, but, unfortunately, the only thing that came to mind was how he got that bloody cut and the bruised jaw. He frowned absently as he thought back on it, trying to see if there had been any other possible way that they could have told Kohaku. Had they done the right thing, or should they have waited until later? Should they have told him at all? Ignore that, stupid question. He amended silently before his mind rambled back onto it's merry tangent. Had there been any way that they could have prevented the fight? He glanced over at the darker shade of black in the darkness that was the young boy with a dead girl's eyes. Had that really been the only way? He wondered. And try as he might, he just could not come up with an answer to that question.

3.

          Kohaku shook his head to stop the dizzy little swirls that pirouetted in front of his eyes only to find that shaking his head actually encouraged the damn things. He swayed a little on his feet.

          For the Chosen children it felt like someone had just punched them in the stomach. Hard.

          Which was what had caused Yamato's momentarily loosening of his grip upon Takeru's shoulder. Which had allowed the youngest Chosen and the only Chosen to have snapped out of the dumbing shock that had suddenly gripped them upon hearing the slim, amber-eyed boy's cheerful, albeit dizzy sounding, announcement. Which had allowed Takaishi Takeru to give a heart-rending wail as he ran forward and wrapped his arms tightly around the surprised Kohaku's chest all the while sobbing incoherent apologies as the slightly taller boy looked on surprised and the Chosen horrified.

          Kohaku glanced down in bewilderment, the sharp hearing that all children seem to possess when it comes to hearing what they're not supposed to coming into full effect and allowing his to catch an 'I'm so sorry' between the hysterical, hiccupping sobs coming from this strange boy. He looked up, confused, at the other children standing there. "What's he apologizing for? And why is he apologizing to me? I've never met him, or any of you for that matter, before." 

          The strange children continued to just stare at him, none seemed willing to speak, and Kohaku's shirt was getting wet from the blond kid's tears, so he tried to extract himself from the kid's tight embrace.

          "C'mon kid, you're getting my shirt all wet . . ." He grumbled.

          The child took a huge gulp of fresh air, masterfully trying to hold down great watery sobs, before sniffing loudly and then bursting into tears again, simply unable to contain them. Kohaku gave a small groan as the kid started to cry again, but his ears pricked as they caught a familiar name coming in tandem with the foreign sound of tears.

          "Is he saying 'Mimi'?" He looked at the other children with surprise and confusion; it wasn't often that he heard that name said by someone in tears. "I have a sister named Mimi, but she's at summer camp, left this morning." Everyone looked away and no one answered him, but he plowed on ahead. "Do you know my Oneesan or something?" 

          The blond kid had lowered the volume of his weeping until it was now no more than a whimper and a snivel into the front of his shirt, while one of the other kids, the tall thin one with dark hair and glasses, made a sluggish move towards him and opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out.

          "Well, _do_ you know my Oneesan?"

          " . . . Yes." The whispery answer came from the stocky boy with the wild brown hair. His eyes looked at Kohaku with something akin to fear.

          "_How?_"

          "She went to the summer camp with us." It was the short boy with spiky red hair that answered this time. He answered with a brisk precision that spoke to something in Kohaku and produced fear.

          "Because you're speaking in a past tense I'll hazard a guess and assume that this isn't the camp." 

          "Then you would be correct." Again the redhead spoke with that chilling precision.

          "And if I hazard that she came with you would that be correct?" Something in him was praying very hard that one of these strange children would say yes.

          "Yes . . . " The sandy haired girl spoke this. Something similar to relief rose in Kohaku. He was too young to recognize hysteria.

          "Well then," He said almost heady with relief that showed it's self in cheerful, almost to a point of sounding frenzied, tone of voice, "Where is my Oneesan?" He added confidentially, like one sharing a great secret, "She will _freak_ when she finds me here; said that she wanted to go to summer camp to get _away_ from me."

          The children all looked away from him again. He now had the chance to notice a group of odd-looking beings huddled in a protective semicircle around these children and himself. He felt something inside him sink. Why wouldn't they talk to him? Why wouldn't they tell him where his Oneesan was?

          "_Where is my Oneesan?_"

          The tall skinny blond boy flinched at the intensity in Kohaku's voice. 

          " . . . Gone away." The dark haired boy finally said distantly, almost as if he wasn't really there.

          "_Gone?_ Gone _where?_ Where is my Oneesan!" Kohaku could feel panic rising in his throat. He had never been one to become hysterical unduly, nor was he a person who took things very seriously, but there was one button he had, that when pushed caused a reaction that would be the equivalent to the that of a tornado on a summer day; fast, violent and out of the blue. That button was his sister and/or anything to do with his sister.  And right now his inborn sixth sense that all siblings seem to have was kicking into overdrive. "_Where is my neechan?_"

          "Dead."

          The silence was sudden and complete. Kohaku closed his eyes and stood very, very still. His voice was very low when he spoke. 

          "How?" 

          It was only one word, but it was the most difficult one they had ever heard pronounced, requiring an equally complex answer.

          "It, it was two weeks ago." And so began the stilted, stumbling account of the battle, of the numb days after, of the frightening nights in with sleep couldn't come, of the deep hate for their enemy, and through out it all Kohaku did not move. He did not blink, he did not even seem to breath as they took turns reciting the events of the past fourteen days. When they finished they were quiet. They watched, silent, as he lowered his head and noticed that he clenched trembling hands into small, furious fists. They respectfully kept quiet and the blond kid even took a step back to give him some room to grieve. 

          He did not move, but it suddenly seemed like the entirety of his attention had narrowed down to focused on the children in front of him. 

           "Which one of you was the one she saved?" The gentle tone of his voice unnerved them. But the tall blond took a half step forward.

          "I am."

          The resounding crack of bone on bone echoed loudly throughout the forest.

          Too stunned to move, the other children stood frozen as Kohaku started to furiously beat at the blond with small, wrathful fists, eyes bright with unshed tears and rage.

          "You bastard." He whispered in breathless gasps between swings. "You bloody _bastard_. You let her _die_."

          Unprepared for the sudden onslaught, the blond didn't even try to defend himself at first. It was only after Kohaku's fist found his jaw that he even made a passable attempt to stop the younger child's punches. 

          "I didn't–" The boy started to protest, but was cut off as the smaller, faster boy tackled his legs, knocking him to the ground with a loud 'oomph!' The blond boy gave a grunt deep in his throat as he felt gravel and dirt dig into the skin on his arms and he now began to seriously try to prevent Kohaku from crushing his face in.

          Just as this incident seemed to reawaken some spark of life in the blond boy, the stocky boy with the wild brown hair seemed to come alive as well, making him dive in to try and intervene. 

          Unfortunately he miscalculated and gave a huge yelp as one of Kohaku's wildly flying fists came into contact with his face, or, to be more precise, his lip. The boy growled, then flung himself into the scuffle with abandon.

          At this point the other children, and even some of the odd-looking animals that had stood passively to the side, now sprang forward to put an end to the fight.

          In the end it took both the dark haired boy and the redhead to get Kohaku off of the two older boys and the plant-creature with the mauve tipped vines and petals to restrain him from lunging back into the fight.

          "It was not Yamato's fault." The dark haired boy stressed as he looked over the other two boys battle wounds, most of which were purely superficial. "It wasn't anyone's fault. It just happened."

          "Yea'," The wild haired boy managed to mumble fairly clearly around his fat lip. "Give Is'ida a break. 'Ow could any of us 'ave known t'at ass'ole would attack so soon after an attack?"

          "Whether or not you should have known isn't the problem," Kohaku grated out, "But you all should have been prepared for something like that! You have a very poor leader if he can't even think so far ahead as to a surprise attack by the enemy." He felt a kind of twisted satisfaction as he watched the wild haired boy flinch and his face crumple slightly.

          "You have no right to say that." The mauve and green plant-thing restraining him said evenly, Kohaku noted surprise on the children's faces at this. "I'm pretty sure that you've never even seen battle, let alone been in one. You have no idea just how chaotic or fast they move."

          "And you do?" He retorted. 

          "Yes!" It cried out. He could hear pain deep in it's voice. "How do you think I felt watching the child that had been Chosen for me to protect-" 

          Rage suddenly ruptured within him. "Well you didn't do a bloody good job of it now did you?" He sneered, and twisted the knife even more deeply. "Where were you while my Oneesan was killed? For what all important reason where you unable to be there when she needed you the most?"

          The plant-thing staggered as though struck. The large beryl green eye in its face became both hard and glassy. "I did my best." It whispered harshly. "I did my best to protect her, I was _there_ for her."

          "Keep telling yourself that and maybe one day you'll believe it." He spat.

          There was a sudden shout, a brief tussle and when the dust cleared the white and violet seal-creature and the yellow and blue wolf-lizard were huddled protectively around the plant-thing, and the dark haired boy and the redhead where both restraining the wild haired boy and the blond boy they called Yamato, while Kohaku crouched defensively off to the side. 

          "I think," The dark haired boy grunted, having hooked his forearms under Yamato's shoulders to restrain him. "That we should set up camp here for the night and then, in the morning, head to Gennai's. Right Taichi?" 

          The wild haired boy roughly jerked his arm from the redhead's grasp, eliciting a startled yelp from the redhead, and glared in Kohaku's direction. 

          "Taichi."

          The wild haired boy reluctantly broke the staring contest between the two and grudgingly turned towards the dark haired boy.

          "Right. We'll spend the night here. Sora, you and Koushiro can go gather firewood tonight. Take Biyomon and Tentomon with you." The girl with sandy hair and the redhead both nodded and left, the pink bird and the over-sized red and green beetle went with them. 

          "Takeru," Taichi crouched down in front of the smaller, blond boy. "Can you handle building the fire tonight," He made that a statement, and not a question. "Agumon will help you." Kohaku watched the small orange dinosaur nod and briskly trotted after the child. 

          "Jyou, you, I, and Yamato will set up the rest of the camp." The last two boys nodded, the blond boy, Yamato, a little stiffly Kohaku saw with a prick of twisted pleasure. Then Taichi turned to him. 

          "If you want to help," He said stiffly. "Then you're welcome to join in."

          Kohaku said nothing and the older boy left. 

          Once the last of the strange children had left him alone, he bowed his head upon his knees, and crossing his arms over his stomach as if it ached.

          If the other children heard a high-pitched keening sound coming from Kohaku's direction, they did not mention it.

4.

          "I'm finished Yamato."

          He blinked, dazed, at Jyou. "Hm?"

          Jyou gave a despairing chuckle and pointed at his bandaged arm. "I've cleaned the cut."

          "Oh. Right."

          They were silent for the moment as they looked over the camp.

          "We should probably be asleep, you know. Storing up energy."

          "Yeah."

          Jyou tilted his head back to look at the bright speckling of stars in the blackness of the heavens. "You know, when I was little,"

          Yamato looked over at Jyou. "Yeah?"

          "When I was little and the nights clear like this," He waved a hand at the bright darkness above them. "I would go and wake up my brother, 'cause I was too afraid to go outside by myself, and we would sit on the balcony. Just watching the skies together. I know that Shin did it just to humor me; I often caught him trying to hide yawns from me."

          "Why did you do it?"

          "Because as a little kid I had privately thought that each star was another world, one with people and history and cultures so similar to our own but at the same time radically different from ours. The thought of other worlds fascinated me."

          "Really?"

          "Hai, but I never thought of them as things that we would conquer or need decimate them or defend ourselves from, like in the movies, but as people that we would learn and grow from knowing them, just as they would from knowing us."

          They both fell silent again, just watching the stars. 

          "I never thought about the stars like that." Yamato murmured softly. "I'd always . . . "

          "Hm?" Now it was Jyou's turn to look over at Yamato curiously.

          "I know this will sound really stupid, but, before my Mother . . . went away, she would, sometimes on the clear nights, take me outside and point out the different constellations to me. And she would tell me that the stars that weren't in constellations were all the good wishes of every person on earth."

          "It would be nice if that was true." Jyou said wistfully.

          "Yeah."

          Below them they could see Koushiro, a dark, hunched form backlit by his laptop screen. Sora was lying curled up with Biyomon, giving a pretense of trying to sleep. Taichi was sitting by himself, a little ways from the fire, just staring blankly into the core of the flames. Takeru was sleeping quietly for once, not tossing or whimpering as he had for the past two weeks. And though this sleep wasn't a completely restful one, there was a small frown on his face; it was a more peaceful one than any of his previous attempts. Patamon was burrowed into his arms.

          "It's good that he's sleeping." 

          "Yeah," Yamato saw no need to say who 'he' was when both knew whom Jyou was referring to.

          "Kohaku hurt Taichi badly today," Jyou said abruptly, turning his gaze to their young leader.

          "I thought you said it was just a fat lip . . . " The younger boy tried to feigned ignorance to what his friend was referring to.

          Jyou gave him an impatient look. "What he said to Taichi just brought to the surface and confirmed what Taichi believes to be true."

          Yamato sighed. "We can't survive like this Jyou, you and I both know it, hell, _they_ know it. We can't survive half alive and afraid to trust our own judgment." He ruefully ran a hand through his hair. "This afternoon just makes that even more apparent."

          "You're right," The older boy rubbed his temples, as if a headache had suddenly struck. "Everything you said couldn't be more true, but there is nothing we can do. Human nature is erratic at best, look at the different reactions to death that each one of us had, fear, denial, humor, anger; each one of us is over compensating in some way. And there is no way to tell what will bring everything back to normal."

          Yamato was quiet for a moment. "You're right." He groaned as he got up stiffly. "Let go down to where it's _warm_." He rubbed vainly at the goose flesh that the cold night air had raised on his arms. 

          Kohaku had moved closer to the fire, driven there by the deep chill in the air, and was closest to where Takeru slept. So when the youngest Chosen woke with a gasp and a quiet sob he was the only one near enough to give any comfort. He looked in faint surprise at the other children when they didn't come over to comfort or check on the boy, sobbing in soundless, tearless cries. If anything they seemed to curl more tightly into themselves at his cries. Finally, he let out a pent up sigh, and went over to the little boy.

          "Hey, gaki," Kohaku said softly to the younger boy, making the child look up, surprised. "If you don't stop crying, I'll never get to sleep." He said with gentle exasperation in his voice. "I'll tell you what, you lay back down and try to go to sleep, and I'll do for you what my neechan always did for me when I couldn't sleep, hai?" The child nodded mutely, eyes still bright with tears he could not shed.

          Kohaku nodded gruffly in return as the child lay down again and closed his eyes. Then Kohaku closed his eyes and began a wordless humming deep in his throat, just the way Mimi had taught him. Then he opened with a few minor vocal exercises and began to softly sing the old lullaby that had always soothed him when he was upset, slowly bringing his voice to its normal range and tone. "_Tell me I will never die, Take away my pain, Rock me gently in your arms, Say that I'll remain in your keeping,_"

          Across the fire Sora and Biymon turned towards the familiar voice in tired wonder.

          "_Brush the hair out from my eyes, Read me a good story, Kiss my fingertips goodnight, Say that I can stay in your company,_"

          Taichi looked up bemused as he heard the light voice drifting with the smoke from the fire around him. Agumon blinked sleepily as he sat up.

          "_And I know this much is true, I have lived inside of you, You have always seen me through, While I am peacefully sleeping,_"

          Koushiro straightened from his laptop, even going as far as closing it half way and turning a face haggard from sleep deprivation towards the singer on the other side of the fire. Tentomon, Gomamon, Gabumon and Palmon all quietly moved closer to the fire.

          "_You have always been my friend, I can see your beauty shining, I will love you till the end, Long will I remain in your keeping,_"

          Yamato looked with surprise at the young boy singing, while Jyou felt something painful rising in his throat, and swallowed hard.

          "_And I know this much is true, I have lived inside of you, You have always seen me through, While I am peacefully sleeping, While I am peacefully sleeping . . . _"

          The last words of the song seemed to linger with the wood smoke among the quiet children camped in the brightly dark forest on the strange world. 

          "Thank you," Takeru said softly, almost hesitantly.

          Kohaku didn't seem to really be paying attention. He nodded vaguely in recognition to the younger boy's thanks. 

          "Your sister had a beautiful voice, just like yours." Jyou added softly, using the back of his hand to rub at his eyes.

          "Yes," Sora nodded. "Your mother must have a beautiful voice."

          "Okaasan?" Kohaku snorted absently. "She couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag, no offense intended, she just has a really crummy voice. Mimi and I, we got our voice from our father."

          "Really?" Taichi asked, obviously surprised by this piece of information and momentarily forgetting the earlier confrontation.

          "Yeah, his mother was a singer, very beautiful alto, that's where Otousan got his voice. When I'm older and my voice breaks, I'll probable be either a baritone like Otousan or a tenor." 

          "Mimi used to sing me that song." The words were slurred by the sleepy child voice. All the children turned in surprise to look at Takeru.

          "She did?" Kohaku whispered, feeling something in his chest twist painfully.

          "Mmmm hmmm, 'cause sometimes, when she was on watch an' even sometimes when she wasn't, I would wake up 'cause of a scary dream. Most time when I did it woke her up too, she said it was 'cause she was a light sleeper, an' she would stay up an' talk to me for a little bit. An' to help me go back to sleep she would sing that song to me. She said it was a magic spell that . . . " The little boy fell asleep before he could finish his last thought.

          "Was used for keeping bad dreams away." Kohaku finished softly for him. 

          "We need to get all the rest we can," Taichi said quietly after a short silence. "In the morning we go find Gennai. Sleep while you can, I take first watch, Yamato second, Jyou third, and–"

          "I'll take last watch." Kohaku interrupted fiercely. 

          Taichi looked into the younger boys face and nodded slowly. "And Kohaku takes last watch. Those not on watch are recommended to get some sleep while they can."

          The rest of the children nodded and tried to find a comfortable place to sleep. And, for the first time in two weeks, they fell asleep as soon as they found a comfortable position, and did not wake from night terrors and ghosts.

          For just a moment, they were children again, and not the Chosen. For just a moment, they were pure again.

–  –  –

~Japanese used in this chapter:

       "Gaki" – Basically it means brat.

       "Otousan" – Father. But you should know that by now.

       "Okaasan" – Mother, and again you should know this by know.

       "Hai" – Yes. 

~Latin used in this chapter:

      "Liber" – this means [a child] or, in plural, [children]. I shall be using this term to refer to the 'baby' stage of the Digimon.

      "Tiro -onis" – this means [a young soldier; a recruit; beginner, learner]. I shall be using this term for the rookie stage.

      "Speculum" – means, [mirror, image, or copy]. This is what Myotismon calls the mirror that Mimi looked into.

       "Seminariums" – means [a plantation, or nursery], and is what I will be calling the primary nurseries.

      "Ovum" – means [egg], and will be used in referring to the egg stage in Digimon.

      "Arbitratus" – means [Will, choice, or decision]. A/N: It will seem very confusing right now, but I _will_ explain the name thing in a later chapter.

      "Mea culpa" – literally means, [through my fault, or I am guilty].

      "Adiudico" – means [to award as a judge, assign, or grant].

      "Tuus possess" – means [thy, thine, or your].

      "Venia" – means [grace, indulgence, favor, permission; pardon, forgiveness].

      "Mater matris" – means [mother, source, or origin].

      "Genitor" – means [father, begetter, or source].

      "Ignosco" – means [to overlook, forgive, or pardon].

      "Meus" – means [my, or mine].

      "Culpa" – means  [fault, or blame].

A/N: these are _very_ loose translations. The prayer that Myotismon says, is meant to say; "I am guilty . . . Grant thy (or thine, which ever you prefer) forgiveness Mother/Source Alphamon, Father/Source Omegamon . . . I am guilty, forgive my fault . . . " that's basically what he _should_ be saying if he isn't, please, please let me know.

–  –  –


	6. Between Alpha and Omega (( going quietly...

Between Alpha and Omega

By, Esmee                       Concept by, Tenshi no Yuma

–  –  –

          I've wept for those who suffer long

                    But how I weep for those who've gone

                    Into rooms of grief and questioned wrong

                    But keep on killing

          It's in the soul to feel such things

                    But weak to watch without speaking

          Oh what mercy sadness brings

                    If God be willing

          There is a train that's heading straight

                    To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate

                    And on the way, child and man

                    And woman wait, watch and wait

                    For redemption day

          Fire rages in the streets

                    And swallows everything it meets

                    It's just an image often seen

                    On television

          Come leaders, come you men of great

                    Let us hear you pontificate

                    Your many virtues laid to waste

          And we aren't listening

          What do you have for us today

                    Throw us a bone but save the plate

                    Oh why we waited til so late

                    Was there no oil to excavate

                    No riches to trade for fate

                    Of every person who died in hate

                    Throw us a bone, you men of great

          There is a train that's heading straight

                    To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate

                    And on the way, child and man

                    And woman wait, watch and wait

                    For redemption day

          It's buried in the countryside

                    It's exploding in the shells of night

                    It's everywhere a baby cries

                    Freedom

                    _'redemption day'_

                   _ ~Sheryl crow_

0.

          People hate what they can see. They hate even more what they cannot see, because they cannot see it and that makes them afraid. People do not like being afraid. People do not like to fear, and that makes them hate. 

          Do you see the pattern? It is a circle: never ending, never begining. People hate because they fear. People fear because they hate.

          But why do people fear in the first place? What could make them hate? 

          It is what they do not know. It is what they cannot see or grasp or understand. What is not corporeal. That is what they fear. The fear is what they hate. And there is always something that people do not know, for whatever reasons. There will always be fear for those reasons. And there will always be hate for _those_ reasons.

          See? A circle . . . 

          Perhaps that is why the white cat hates me so. I am tangible, and yet . . . not tangible. She can see me and yet she . . . cannot. I represent all the nightmares she has ever had, and yet I don't at the same time. I am evil, yet not. So she does not understand. Because she does not understand, she fears. Because she fears, she hates. Because she hates, she does not try to understand. And the circle begins anew.

          And she _does_ hate me. With an intensity that is rather odd. Especially when one considers the rumors about me; the ones that say I can sense others emotions, even if I have none of my own any more.

          You must be very careful about rumors; sometimes they are not rumors.

          Had I my own emotions, I'm sure I would have found it more than just a little amusing. I do not like hypocrites.

          She did confront me about it once. I suppose that was rather brave of her. But all she was really trying to do was justify her killing to herself by pointing to me and saying look at that, look at how that kills. Perhaps she is right. I don't care. I have no need to pacify my conscious.

          She was never so foolish again. 

          The Master had waved a lavender hand, dismissing us until he wished to see us again. His amusement at the bat's quivering fear was very rich and sweet, like dark chocolate. That is what amusement tastes like, though it does vary pertaining to the type of amusement. The more cruel the amusement, the darker and richer the taste. It can become almost so rich that it gags you and makes you ill. There were other tastes entwined within the amusement. There was fear and anger. And desire.

          Fear is a stale taste. Thick and disgusting. It slides copiously down your throat, and makes you reel. Anger is different. Exhilarating. Heady and spicy, like so much rich perfume. It too can become nauseating. Desire is something else all together.

          Desire is a taste that slides down your limbs, making them heavy, and warms your gut. It tastes salty.

          I had kept to the shadows, when I left, as I always do. It is by far the easiest way to move through the halls. Nobody walks in the shadows anymore. They are too afraid.  So I kept to the shade of the halls, making sure not to let others see me lest they run in mindless terror. I could care less actually, but the Master did not wish to lose any more subordinates, no matter how insipid.

          "How dare you," were the words the white cat hissed to me. The anger that hung in the air tasted very strong. She was behind me, and the words echoed sibilantly from the dank stones. I neither stopped nor turned round. This increased her anger tenfold.

          "Look at me when I speak to you, Vipe." It was the sheer insolence that spiked the anger that made me turn, if only to humor the ashen cat. 

          Her rage made the hairs on her spine rise. She sat perched on the ledge of an old, inset window, perhaps once a shrine. Her eyes were bright, hot cobalt. I waited.

          "You are a monster." She spat. "You are worse than _Him_. You disgust me." My lack of any response to her comments only seemed to enrage her further.

          "You had a choice." Her voice became slightly ragged and rose shrilly in volume. "You could have chosen not to kill them all. Just enough to pacify him, leaving the rest alive. You could have shown _some_ mercy." Her eyes were very hard; the taste of hate lay thickly between us.

          Ah hate. It does not taste as one would expect it to. You would expect, from the motion that it inspires, that it would be a disgusting taste, one that is ugly and sour. But it's not.

          Hate. It tastes sweet and bubbly. Like drinking fine champagne. And it is smooth. And both hot and cool. Like drinking wind or air. It quickens the blood. It is addictive. I think I understand now why so many hate with out just cause. But it makes you sick afterward. Sick and needy and wanting more. You soon become dependent on it, like an expensive drug habit. And, like a drug habit, you don't think you can stop. 

          "You're mercy . . . " she snarled again. "You are worse than _Him._ At least he lets some live." I gave her a moment to be silent in.

          "And that is merciful?" My question, or perhaps it was the fact that I was speaking at all, seemed to unbalance her.

          "Of course it is."

          "And you show this . . . _mercy_ . . . too?"

          "Yes. I only kill those who need it to satisfy his bloodlust. I leave the rest."

          "Butcher." 

          Her shock and outrage tasted strong. But it was not strong enough to cover the flavor of her unease or fear. Not at all. Cobalt darkened and narrowed. 

          "_You_ dare accuse _me_–"

          "You kill and then you leave." I cut her off, drifting into the shadows slightly. "You do not stay behind to witness the mourning. You do not see them, though you claim too. You are too much blinded by your fear of the Master. You do not watch them curse the heavens, or plot hopeless, meaningless revenge. You may kill only few bodies, but you mangle many souls. That is your mercy." She glared at me, hating me. Fearing me. Cobalt narrowed. 

          "You are a disease to me. A putrid mistake that should be eradicated from the face of the world. You and him both." The cat pulled black lips back, revealing long, pale incisors.

          "And you are merciful." I replied softly. "Very merciful indeed. I only wonder if you hear the voices of the ones you damned wailing at night. I wonder if you shouldn't pray." Cobalt widened and jet dilated. 

          Ribbons of air hissed where her hand cut through it, silver crescents of claws sweeping towards my face.

          We two stared at each other, there in the darkening passageway, with the dirty sputter of the torches making mockeries and ghouls of our shadows and faces. Cobalt stared into amber. My cheek burned white-hot where I knew my tattoo was. I could see green reflecting in the cobalt and jet of her eyes.

          I held her claws away from my face, paused in mid air by my own hand. Stopping without any effort their lightening path towards me. Her pale muzzle pulled back further to reveal bone-white canines.

          She then wrenched her paw from my grasp. We watched each other.

          She retreated to let me continue onward. A sign of deference; an acknowledgement of dominance.

          The scent of her hate was almost as great as that of her feelings of humiliation. And that of her fear. Humiliation is a bitter, dry taste. Quite unpleasant. 

          I drifted by, and did not look back.

          The thing I remember most about that encounter though is that, in the end, the taste of her hate was very great. So great I could not tell whom she hated more, herself or me.

**((CHAPTER VI: GOING QUIETLY MAD))**

1.

           The shadow slunk along the forest floor, little more than a flicker of movement at the edge of one's vision. It darted between the thick undergrowth at the speed of a thought and paused every once in a while to survey its surroundings. Once satisfied about something, it would continue onward in its mercurial movements. A flicker of cerulean, a sudden dash of silver slate, and it would vanish again.

          The ghostly beastie paused for a second time at the edge of the woods, hunkering down on strong hind legs and reaching up small hands with a limited dexterity to the thick ruff of azure and indigo mane around its neck. It lifted a thin cord of shell pink up and examined the golden pendent that hung on it. It tugged the cord once, hard, then, seemingly pleased, replaced it and sprang out from the protective jewel-hued shadows of the forest with a single, powerful thrust of its hind limbs. It sprinted swiftly across the open space, not pausing til it reached the over side of the cleaning, and then, only under the subjective cover of fairly dense shrubbery. It held still for some time before moving forward again. 

          It continued its journey in this manner. Sudden sprints across open clearings, and sometimes across moderately large tributaries, and lightening zigzagging between the narrow, smooth trucks of saplings and the gnarled bodies of the older plants. There were no tracks left behind it to identify that it had passed. It rarely paused to rest. 

          Then one morning, it lifted its vaguely canine muzzle to the air, large rounded ears tipped with tuffs of indigo and cerulean pricking slightly as they caught the almost unheard vibration of sound in the air. Large jade eyes narrowed thoughtfully as they considered the length and frequency of the vibrations. So, on instinct – or perhaps simple curiosity – it spun about-face ninety degrees and skulked towards the source of the vibration.

          As it turned out, it was a small, rather tattered group of traveler making the noise that had distracted it. It cocked its head curiously, as it observed the younglings traveling below it. They seemed to move in sets of two, one digi to one Mon. It gave a soft snort.

          These must be the Chosen and their Bonded, it realized. It trailed along beside them for a while, watching the Chosen pairs with unbridled fascination, and, perhaps, some envy. How, it wondered, would it feel to be that close to his Bonded? He shook himself. Speculation was all well and good in its place, but he had work to do. He watched the Chosen children for another moment.

          He would let them go ahead of him. They needed to talk to Gennai. So did he, it was true, but his matter, he felt sure, was not quite as important. He backed off from the trail the Chosen were following, and headed deeper into the forest. This would give him time to catch up on his beauty sleep.

2.

          Gatomon wanted to kill something. Badly.

          She clenched her paws into fists and crouched onto her hunches in the middle of the cold stone corridor. She growled deep n her throat. The flickering shadows made by the inconsistent torch light seemed to mock her. She hated being mocked.

          "Bitch." The white cat hissed under her breath. "Master's fuck." She felt a shiver stiffen her spine, anticipating that any moment a furious, gray-gloved hand was going to reach from the darkness to steal away her life. Her eyes darted to the shadows.

          "Vipe," she said louder this time, teasing the fates. "Judas Vipe."

          "I wouldn't antagonize her if I were you." The white cat spun reflexively; bring her paws up in front of her in a defensive posture, at the slightly nasal voice. A wordless snarl flew from her dark lips when her eyes fell on the gangly silhouette with a shock of straw-colored hair providing stark contrast to the black of cloak and shadow. Pale chips of apple green, the color of a winter sky in the evening, watched her disapprovingly. Gatomon snorted in disgust, and looked away.

          "I didn't ask for your opinion." There was definitely a large amount of venom in the smaller digi's voice. The silhouette shrugged it off.

          "It is not merely my opinion. It is fact. She is dangerous. She could destroy you with a wave of her hand. Do not antagonize her unnecessarily." The shadowed digi shot back sharply. The white cat glared at him.

          "Why do you care? It's none of your concern. I will deal with that Judas Vipe as I see fit Wizardmon."  The cat gave a feral grin and slashed her claws through the air in front of her. "I will see it bleed."

          The taller digi passed his hand over his eyes wearily. He walked from the shadows to the narrow ledge of the desecrated shrine that sat slightly inset into the wall. Once settled comfortably, he turned compassionate eyes on the smaller, snow colored digi.

          "You won't even admit to yourself that you're afraid of her. How in the names of the Blessed Twins do you think you'll be able to 'see it bleed' as you put it?" He said gently. The fine hairs on Gatomon's spine stood on end.

          "I am not afraid of it!" She snarled. She crouched down in front of him, tail lashing wildly.

          "Your fear of your master makes you fear the Dark Wings because she is replacing you as your master's fuck, I believe you called it." He let himself slide down until he was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall. He took off his hat and placed it on the dusty stones next to him. Gatomon growled and took a breath.

          "Let me speak," he gave the smaller digi a warning glance. "While you were the competent General, Myotismon needed you. This gave you a limited safety, seeing as harming you would set him back. No smart leader would intentionally do that, and Myotismon is nothing if not smart." Gatomon had to give a conceding nod, however grudgingly. Wizardmon saw this and continued.

          "Before that you . . . you were not safe. The scars you cover with your gloves prove that. And though you did not like it, it was a necessary thing. And now this being has usurped your power, your place," Gatomon saw him look at her thoughtfully.

          "And perhaps your identity as well. This replacement makes you vulnerable. Now that Myotismon does not need you, he can hurt you again. So you fear her, hate her and want her gone so you can resume you 'rightful' place at Myotismon's side." He shook his head and turned his gaze to the ceiling. Gatomon was speechless. Whether from anger or amazement, she wasn't sure. Wizardmon turned to her again.

          "Gatomon, you can leave this place now," he was pleading with her, she realized. "You never belonged here in the first place. You were searching for something before Myotismon found you, before he hurt you. You can search for it again. You are free because he no longer needs you. You can leave."

          She stared at him wonderingly. "Why do you care?" He reached a hand out to her.

          "You once helped me for no other reason than that I needed help." He spread his hands in front of him, showing her palms bare of any trickery. "Now let me do the same for you. The only reason I came to this Omegamon touched place at all was to help you. I consider you my friend." She stared, confused, at his palms and then at his face.

          "Cast off this place with me," he urged. "Come with me and together we will search for whatever it is that you lost. Please."

          The snowy cat bowed her head. Thoughts of freedom, though not new ones, spiraled in her head. Her heart seemed to lurch forward in her chest. To be able to search again! To be free . . . 

          Free . . .

          But would she be truly free? Or would this odd digi use some deceit to bind her to him as Myotismon had done? She looked into his winter sky colored eyes and saw only an honest desire to help her there. To protect her if need be. She saw all this in his eyes and more. It made her want to weep. It had been so long since she had let herself trust someone . . . So very long . . .

          Too long.

          Gatomon felt amusement bubble up in her chest, as the gangly digi's eyes grew saucer-round when she grabbed his hands. She smiled, and this time all the cynicism was gone from the look. Wizardmon seemed to sag in relief.

          "When do we leave?" The straw-blond digi gave her a brilliant smile.

          "Very soon. I just need to make some arrangements."

3.

          Kohaku stared listlessly around the softly lit living room. The warm glow of the candles caused unique valleys and crevasses of ruddy black against the pale walls. The bookcases against the walls were lined thickly with scrolls, ancient, crumbling manuscripts, and what looked like sleek chrome data pads. The floor was made from a wood, sandblasted to an almost velvet smoothness, with a warm rosy glow to the grain. The walls, what he could see of them at any rate, seemed to be of some smooth creamy material. Rice paper, he though but wasn't sure. It seemed too thick to be rice paper.

          However, he didn't give a rat's ass what the room looked like; it could have been the grandest palace or the filthiest shit-hole, and he wouldn't have noticed. Or if he had noticed, he wouldn't have cared.

          Glancing around him, he saw the other children; the _Chosen_ they called themselves, he remembered with scorn, were caught between a mixture of frustration and fear. The digimon were neither and looked quite bored, though content. He turned away from them, going back to staring blackly into space. It made him look very eerie, and friends had told him otherworldly, when he let his expressively large eyes go blank. And he refused to talk to any of the other children except to complain or belittle something. It was becoming a rather agitating habit, especially for some of the other children. That was one of the main reasons he kept doing it. He grinned maliciously to himself as he remembered the look on the Yagami kid's face earlier that day when he'd insulted his directional skills. He knew that though they felt penitent and sorrowful about his Oneesan, they were quickly losing their patience with him _and_ his attitude. 

          Not that he really blamed them for that; he himself was become rather nauseated with his bitchiness on some deep internal level, but he wouldn't admit that for the entire world. He trapped a faint sigh in his throat and dropped his head onto his arms, which were encircling his knees. So it was, perhaps, because of his preoccupation with the empty space in front of him that he didn't notice the youngest of the Chosen children creep over to him.

          "Can I sit with you, Kohaku-san?" The timorousness he saw when he looked into the younger boy's face made him flinch. It looked too much like a small dog waiting to be kicked for his liking. It made his first instinct one of enveloping the younger boy in a protective circle of reassurance. He promptly squashed it, reminding himself harshly that this child was the younger brother to the boy that had gotten his Oneesan killed. 

          "It's a free country." He scowled fiercely, hoping to drive the boy away with this cold rebuke. "But shouldn't you be with your brother. They're all waiting for someone." The boy didn't budge, and instead looked down, picking at the laces on his shoes with a grubby fingernail.

          "They –they don't really need me. Not right now," he added hastily, looking up at the older boy with beseeching eyes, and Kohaku was suddenly forced to wonder whether that hurriedly tacked-on reassurance wasn't more for Takeru's own benefit than for himself. "And I thought . . . " The child faltered here and looked down again. Kohaku allowed himself to give-in to one of his more kind urges.

          "You thought?" He prompted gently, making the robin's egg blue eyes shoot back up to his face in amazement. He had to suppress a wry smile that wanted to rise to his lips, seeing the dawning hopefulness in the child's eyes at the faint encouragement. Takeru took a deep unsteady breath.

          "I thought you looked lonely," he got out in a rush. "I just thought you looked lonely." For some odd reason that he couldn't explain, Kohaku felt his chest constrict. The kid had been concerned about him and he had been trying to brush him off. It made him feel more than a little guilty. He shifted, feeling ashamed of his behavior.

          "Look, Takeru-san, I–"

          At that moment a sharp buzz of energy darted through the room, causing all it's occupants to glance, startled, at the far wall, now sliding open to reveal a long bamboo, black lacquer, and rice paper corridor. The children all looked at each other. The girl, Sora, shrugged when Yagami's gaze fell on her, looking for some kind of guidance. This seemed to deflate the boy. He shook his head as if to clear away any lingering misgivings and gestured that they should use the corridor. Yagami's gaze connected with Kohaku's for just a moment and the younger boy felt tempted to ignore the older boy's quasi askance stare and stay just where he was. The more sensible part of him reasoned that it was safer to stick with the group, even if he didn't like it. Hell, the sensible part argued, you might even go home faster if you cooperate _somewhat_. 

          So, for not the first time, nor the last time, the sensible part in him won the argument. He got up stiffly, feeling an ache in his bones from sitting on the cold floor, and followed the rest of the children through the new doorway.

          He tensed in surprise when he felt a small, soft hand slip into his own and grip it tightly. He spared a momentary glance at the small fairy-blond boy holding onto his hand before joining up with the rest of the Chosen. He did not shake loose from Takeru's sweaty grip.

          The end of the hallway was a set of candy-apple red doors trimmed with tarnished gold. Once he was close enough to the doors he could also make out a script emblazed in the varnish that looked almost like some form of maligned ancient mandarin. Kohaku thought that it looked familiar for a moment, like some writing Okaasan had been translating before he'd left. That gave him a fleeting pause; could that be where he'd seen it? On one of those crumbling documents that Okaasama was always working on, translating from some lost dialect to a language understandable to today's people perhaps? For a moment he was grateful of the writing; it suddenly made this world seem just a little less foreign.

          The doors remained shut, even at their approach. They stopped in front of it, waiting for it to open, and when it didn't, they shifted uneasily on their feet and looked at each other to see if anyone had at least some idea of what they did now. The oldest boy of the group drew aside Koushiro, whispering urgently to him, as the redhead glanced back and forth between him and the door and nodding at some of his words. In the mean while Taichi and Ishida were conversing in low voices with several of the digimon, gesturing at the door forcefully even as the digis shook their head in bewilderment. Kohaku felt the soft hand in his grip shift, and tighten but not let go. He felt the smaller boy lean against him slightly, as if too tired to hold up his own weight any longer, but did not comment on it. He saw the Sora look over in their direction purposefully.

          "Kohaku-san," all the other children called him that; they seemed afraid to call him anything else. The burnished-haired girl was not daunted by the younger boy's lack of reply or suddenly icy demeanor. "Do you have any idea how we get in?"

          The amber-eyed boy gave her a bored look. "If I had, don't you think I would have already tried it? It's not like I _want_ to be stuck in a small, enclosed space with you people for _any_ amount of time." He ignored the sudden tension he felt build up in the hand holding his. Sora didn't seem fazed, or if she was she hid it very well.

          "Well, I just thought that, maybe, you had thought of something and didn't know how to bring it up or . . . something." She finished lamely. Kohaku gave a snort and pulled roughly away from where he was standing – and Takeru in the process – and went over to examine the doors. He pretended to not hear the soft whimper of hurt the younger boy involuntarily released.

          Closer inspections of the doors lead to the discovery that they were actually quite old. Chips of paint had flaked off of the edges, and some of the writing was so worn away that it could no longer be read. But, looking closer, the writing itself was almost not writing, more like those word-picture thingies Kaasama had tried to tell him about. Those what-were-they-called things: pira- hiero- hieroglyphics! That's what she'd called them, hieroglyphics. He wracked his brain, trying to remember what else Kaasama had said about them. He gave a frustrated grunt; the only thing he could remember her telling him about them was that they were one of the earliest forms of writing and very primitive.

          "Taichi," he heard Jyou call out behind him. "Koushiro and I think–" He ignored the sudden rise of voices and kept his attention on the door. If he could just get this bloody thing to open then–

          Then what? He asked himself.

          Then we're one step closer to going home, he answered himself. One step closer to Okaasama and Otousan and fast food and video games and his friends and hot baths and clean clothes and his room and his bed and–

          And trying to explain to Okaasama and Otousan where their daughter was, and why she would never be with them again. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door, thoughtless of the others behind him, and swallowed something that felt suspiciously like a sob rising in his throat. He hated this, this world, these monsters, and these children, all of them. He hated it so much it was a physical pain, like he'd cut himself somehow. He took several deep breaths to steady himself.

          Dammit all.

          He smashed his fist into the solidity of the door, not caring about the strangled yelp of pain it drew from him as he felt the fragile bones in his hand bruise upon impact, and ignoring the frightened gasps behind him. Someone ran up beside him and grabbed his hand in their own; to prevent him from harming himself further he assumed bitterly.

          "What're you doing Kohaku-san, you could hurt yourself!" He recognized the concerned voice as that of Sora. He jerked from her grasp and spun around. 

          "Just leave me alone. I don't want your concern," he snarled with eyes blazing almost a molten gold as the older girl stumbled back a few paces. Koushiro came up behind her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. 

          "You shouldn't snap at Sora just because she was worried about you," Koushiro said quietly. Taichi and Yamato nodded, while Jyou looked grim. Kohaku's throat worked furiously, and he clenched his jaws tightly. He looked around the circle of faces and saw the worry, the partially self-righteous anger, and the weariness, but it was the expression of confusion and . . .disappointment? . . . in Takeru's eyes that caused something in him to snap.

          "Leave me alone," he pushed away from them. Shaking off caring hands outstretched in distress violently. "Just leave me alone!"

          He heard a sudden shuffle of feet and a voice hiss in low key: "Don't follow him Takeru." He felt his eye prickle and he rubbed the back of his hand across them roughly. Damn them all to hell and back. Damn them and their 'concern'.

          He buried his face in his arms and sank down to the ground. He stayed that way until he heard Taichi's excited voice ring throughout the corridor, signifying the opening of the door. He waited for a few more minutes, trying to regain control over his emotions before staggering to his feet and trailing after the rest of the Chosen through the doorway. He did not ask what had opened it, but assumed from Koushiro's gleeful face and Jyou's rather sour one that it had been some idea of the formers to open it and not the latter's.

          In this new room, the lighting was much better. Not bright, but more piercing. It sliced over the walls and shelves bringing bright clarity to even the darkest of corners. And after the semi-darkness of the hallway, that was very bright indeed. Kohaku took several minutes to blink his eyes and become accustom to the sudden change in illumination. Now that he could see properly, he could make out a huge desk cloistered in one of the far corners of the room. It was covered with messy piles of loose paper and unbound scrolls. On top of some of the more fantastic of piles there were data-pads weighing the papers down. Pens and other forms of writing utensils are scattered haphazardly across the desktop; he thought he saw a computer keyboard – or something that looks eerily like a keyboard – half hidden under a snowdrift of crisp white paper. He also noted, with some interest, that most of the paper and scrolls and even the data-pads were yellowed with time. Someone, he thought to himself, was doing a fair amount of research. There was a window with a dense bamboo shutters and metal latches and braces above and slightly to the left of the desk, and a door opposite it. The door appeared to be locked, or at least shut tight, and on the wall behind and to the right of the desk was a huge screen that took up almost all of the wall space. A bookcase took up much of the rest of the space of the room; which was really quite small now that he thought about it. At the moment, the bookcase was next to empty. He assumed that this is because its contents are the wild array of papers on the desk. He could not find the source of the light in the room.

          Kohaku jerked warily as he sensed movement on the periphery of his vision. An old man with a webbing of wrinkles over his face and sunken eyes had stepped towards them, inclining his head towards the children. The boy thought that he could see amusement on the old man's face. He saw that none of the other children or digimon jumped, not even Takeru, and felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment and anger. He was so caught up in this odd combination of emotions that he failed to notice that the man was scrutinizing him intently.

          "So this is the new Carrier, is it?" The old man's voice was gravely and slightly nasal at the same time. Kohaku knew that his voice was most likely the result of some accident in his youth; he could recognize the odd metallic catch that came when the man pronounced 't' and 's' words. His voice instructor had the same catch – that was the reason he was an instructor and not a performing tenor – from an accident when he was fourteen.

          "Well, are you all mute or is one of you going to answer me?" The man's voice was waspish, but Kohaku thought he could detect some strange unsettlement in it.

          "Well?"

          "Yes," Taichi spoke softly, and tried to keep back out of view. The old man smiled triumphantly and turned to Kohaku, who happened to be glaring in Taichi's direction.

          "Wonderful," he smiled warmly. It wavered only slightly when faced with the young boy's magnificent scowl. Kohaku scowled more blackly when he realized this. "I think that before we do anything, you should all rest." As he turned, Kohaku's sharp ears caught something like, 'you'll need it.'

          He lead them through the door Kohaku had notice at the opposite end of the room earlier. From there he lead them through a series of rooms and doors that twisted like a maze throughout the house. Because most of these were poorly lit, all the children tried to stay as close to the old man as possible without hindering his movement.

          Each room they passed through was unique unto itself. There were no two that were exactly the same. One room the passed was nothing but bookcases, and the next held none. One room had obviously once held dozens of desk, and was perhaps a schoolroom whereas the next they saw seemed to be some sort of exercise room. Kohaku was intrigued by the variations of the room and wanted to ask about them, but held his tongue, remembering his earlier humiliation.

          "Gennai-san," Koushiro was forced into a latent jog to match the old man's stride. Evidently Kohaku wasn't the only one curious about the strange assortment of rooms. "Gennai-san," he repeated, trying to garner the older man's attention. Without breaking stride, Gennai looked down at the redhead.

          "Koushiro?" The boy quickened his stride to draw abreast of Gennai. He had an intense look of concentration on his face.

          "I was wondering, did this building use to be a school or something?" To Kohaku's surprise, Gennai seemed to stagger at the question.

          "As a matter of fact it did," Gennai kept staring straight ahead. "It was the training monastery of Templers."

          "Templers?"

          "Wait here," Gennai stopped abruptly, ignored Koushiro's query and gesturing to a room on their right. His voice was curt. "I'll bring you some dinner shortly." He did not wait for a reply before vanishing back down the hall.

          This room was small and square. The walls were covered with plush hangings and tapestries, all of which were faded, obviously having seen much better days. In the center of the room were two square tables, pushed together to make one long rectangle. Shallow dishes half filled with some kind of burning oil were set in the center of the tables, one at either end, and gave off a mellow orange-red glow. Besides the low table, there was a squat chest-of-drawers directly behind it. It had tarnished bronze knobs and was most likely empty now. Dusty cushions lay scattered about the bare floor. The smallest of the digis crawled under the table, and curled up together to generate a bit more warmth for themselves. The larger ones, like Agumon and Gabumon, settled themselves next to their bonded Chosen. Yamato fussed over his brother, settling the youngest of the Chosen into a soft nest of cushions and getting Gabumon to curl up next to him. Sora and Jyou sat primly at the table, waiting for Gennai to return with the proffered food, while Koushiro plopped down in a with his laptop in a corner; how he got the bloody thing to work without a visible power source Kohaku did not want to know. Tentomon hovered at his shoulder. Taichi had dragged some pillows over to where Takeru was and was talking in a soft, reassuring voice to the younger boy. Palmon ignored Kohaku and crowded herself under the table, where she just barely fit, with the smaller Gomamon and Patamon. They welcomed her silently.

          Kohaku told himself that he didn't care that no one even looked over to see what he was doing, but the plain truth of the matter was that it hurt. Even if he did not like these people, they were all he had of home; and with home, his sister. There was a part in him that wanted desperately to talk to them about his sister, what she was like, how she had been coping and the like, but he couldn't. If there was anything that was a common trait among his family, it was pride. He was simply too proud to say please. And, he told himself, he shouldn't have to. He shouldn't have to, but that didn't make him any less lonely.

          He moved himself down to the far end of the room, as far away from the other children as he could get. Unfortunately this was also as far away from the light as he could get, so he fumbled slightly as he tried to find a comfortable position in the dark It was when he leaned back that he felt a strange hard object jabbing into his back. He frowned to himself and felt around with his hand on the wall. It only took a moment to locate the latch and another moment to realize that there was much more to this room than had first met his eye. But he was unable to further explore this small find because Gennai returned at that moment carrying a rather venerable tray of steaming food, and he decided that not starving himself to death would probably be a good idea. Especially if he wanted to discover more about the room. 

          The food, which when Gennai had brought in seemed more than enough for the hungry Chosen, quickly proved to be not nearly enough. It only wet their appetite, but none of them mentioned the fact because having now eaten, they were suddenly aware a heavy exhaustion that dragged at their limbs. Kohaku glanced back at the wall, at the tapestry that covered what he was assuming until he found out more to be a doorway, with heavy eyelids. He _wanted_ to find out more right now, but he was just so tired! He decided then that he would sleep for a while and then, when more rested, investigate the door further.

          Gennai reappeared then, and lead them silently from the room. Kohaku forced himself to try and memorize some distinguishing characteristics of the hallways so he could find his way back. He thought that it was a very lucky thing indeed that the room Gennai had picked to house them for their stay was only three or so corridors away from that odd room, otherwise he might not have been able to remember where the room was. 

          His last thought before falling gently into the arms of sleep was how much the scent of the beeswax candles that lit the room reminded him of his Oneechan.

4.

          The old man refilled his sake cup with a shaky hand. He downed it in a single swig and moved a trembling hand over to the decanter again. Because he wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing, his hand missed the decanter and knocked it over with his elbow. He watched in a stupor as the clear, golden liquid dripped its remnants to the floor. Droplets of fluid hung poised at the corner of the table for a moment, refracting shards of light clear and golden, before falling and shattering in a burst of brilliance. Immeaditly after another droplet would take its place and repeat the pattern. The fluid was seeping into the wood of the table, staining the white oak wood dark amber.

          Amber. Oh blessed ones, how could he not recognize those eyes . . .?

          It was almost incomprehensible to him. To not recognize eyes that were dearer to him than his on soul? It was ludicrous. Unbelievable. And true. He had not recognized them when they'd been right in front of him. Right in front of him . . . And he'd looked into them and he'd_ felt nothing_. He hadn't remembered. It had taken a question from the young Koushiro to trigger his memory. Once the boy had asked about the monastery it had all come flooding back to him, like a dam had shattered. Overwhelming him. Everything he thought he would never forget. And he knew then whom those eyes of the new Carrier had belonged to.

          He had promised himself that he would never forget. Perhaps that was why it upset him so that he hadn't seen it right away. Not who the eyes had belonged to once, so long ago – though that would have been painful enough – but the fact that he'd forgotten in the first place. For all he'd professed to be guilty and promised himself to never ever forget, he had. He had forgotten. For all that, he'd forgotten. He just could not get past that.

          How could he forget eyes that could change like quicksilver at the faintest emotion? Eyes that had shone with such brilliance and such steel will.  Eyes that he had seen cloudy with lust and opaque and swirling with flecks of gold and desire. How could he _not_ . . .

          He laughed low and bitterly to himself. This must truly be a sign from Valhalla that he was not to be forgiven for his sins. And he could not think of a more cruel punishment than to have the only things he had left of Angelus, his memories, taken from him. But he could not say that it was not fitting. He had, after all, asked to have the image of Angelus as he had last seen him wiped from his mind forever. The Gods must have taken him quite literally. He was lucky though, the new Carrier looked nothing like him in face or form, just in the eyes . . . 

          Amber eyes that had shifted in a confusion of emotions, dancing like a whirlwind of colorful autumn leaves. Amber eyes that had shown surprise, then anger, and behind them all, betrayal.

          Gennai decided he needed another drink.

5.

          The small boy curled into himself more tightly. He huddled more deeply into the loose embrace of the bigger boy next to him, burying his face into the other boy's chest and inhaling the comforting, familiar scent of his shirt. The older boy shifted slightly, murmured something incomprehensible, and rolled over a little. The boy opened his eyes and stared at the other boy when he felt this. The bigger boy was thin and bony, all wrists and elbows and knees. Like a colt. Pale hair framed his face, slack with sleep, in airy spikes. His Niisan. It didn't matter where they were, or how far from home they were; as long as his Niisan was there, that _was_ home. It had always been like that.

          But that didn't prevent the knowledge that this was not home and perhaps never would be. It helped it, but didn't stop it. But he didn't complain. No he didn't, he considered himself too old to be wailing about the predicament they were in any more. And he knew that Yamato didn't like it. And when Yamato didn't like something, he tended to ignore it. Takeru did _not_ want Yamato to ignore him. Not when he was finally paying attention to him.

          Takeru rolled over on to his side, facing away from his brother. He let his eyes rest on the deeply sleeping form of the tan and cream hamster-like digi that was his responsibility. It was a new experience, being responsible for someone else and he was not entirely sure he liked it. It was much easier to have someone looking after you than it was to look after someone else, that was for sure. But . . . in an odd way it felt nice. A part of him enjoyed having the young digi look up to him. And in all honesty it felt wonderful knowing that no matter what he did there would always be someone that would be with him.

          He suddenly stiffened, his heart palpitating wildly as he heard a rustle of movement behind him. He panicked; trying to recall all the things the others had ever told him about surviving wild animal encounters, before he remembered that they were in Gennai's home and that nothing could get them. He let his body relax then, but kept his ear cocked, wondering who was wake so late.

          The person moved around the bodies on the floor and towards the door without any real sound. Had Takeru not been listening for it, he wouldn't have known someone was up. There they paused and seemed to listen for a moment. Takeru saw in the muted light of the almost spent lamp that Kohaku had a look of fierce concentration on his face. In the light, he had his sister's eyes when she was deciding to do something that she knew they wouldn't approve of. The older boy slipped out the door. After a moment, Takeru looked back at his brother, then at the door. He bit his lip and waited for one of the others to get up and follow him, as he felt sure they would. When no one did, he looked at the door again, still hesitant of what to do. Finally, he got up silently, not even waking Patamon, and followed the amber-eyed boy.

          He was lucky and saw the other boy as he slipped around the corner of the hall. He quickly found out that if he didn't keep the older boy in sight he could very easily get lost among the maze-like corridors. He actually lost Kohaku for one blood-chilling moment, and thoughts of being found decades later as a dusty skeleton danced through his brain. He was saved, luckily, when he heard a disgusted curse come from his right. He followed the older boy as he backtracked several hallways. He made sure that Kohaku was always in his sight after that.

          When they finally arrived at wherever the other boy had been trying to get to, Takeru recognized it with a puzzled frown. Why, he wondered internally, would Kohaku-san want to come back here? Indeed, the amber-eyed boy had lead them right back to the room they had eaten in. Takeru watched as the other boy paused furtively at the threshold of the room, apparently checking to make sure no one was around, before slipping in like a ghost.

          Gennai had left the bowls of lamp oil burning on the tables, but they were low and obviously almost depleted, so they gave little light. But Kohaku, apparently, felt that it was enough for whatever it was he went back there to accomplish. Takeru stayed crouched in the shadows of the doorway, watching as the older boy scrabbled around under one of the wall hangings. He heard some grunts, like Kohaku was trying to lift or pull something extremely heavy or awkward. Then there was silence. The silence dragged on for such a long time that Takeru felt tempted to go in and see if something was wrong. 

          At that moment there was a soft shifting of the material of the hanging and the older boy backed out slowly. He moved away from the wall and crouched nearer to the circle of weakened light cast by the lamps. He crouched on his heels, bracing himself with his arms. He seemed to stare at the wall from which he'd just come, but Takeru couldn't really tell because with the light at his back, the amber-eyed boy's face was a mask of black shadows. Takeru watched with alarm as tremors rolled over the older boy's thin frame. Kohaku looked too pale, but it may just have been the light.

          Suddenly too worried to care what the other boy's reaction would be to learn that he'd been followed, Takeru darted over to him wrapping his slightly shorter arms around the minutely taller boy's shoulders. At this odd moment it struck him suddenly that this boy was only one or two years older than him at the most.

          "Kohaku-kun," he asked urgently, "what's wrong?" As he'd subconsciously predicted, the older boy stiffened in surprise, and possibly a little anger, at finding that he'd been followed. But he didn't pull away from the younger boy, as Takeru had expected him to do, and snarl something cold and biting. Instead he seemed to crumple into himself and hug his arms tightly around his chest, as he turned his face into the only slightly smaller boy's shoulder, making Takeru aware for the first time of the hard, rectangular object that Kohaku held to his chest. He suddenly recognized the tremors that shook the other boy's shoulders, sobs. Suddenly unbalanced by finding himself in the role of comforter instead of the comforted, Takeru did not ask what Kohaku had been doing or what he had found. He just held the other boy until the tremors subsided and he pulled away.

          The two boys got up silently, the slightly taller one gestured for the other to follow him, and they left the dimly lit room and into the maze of corridors that lead to their sleeping area. At the threshold of their room, Kohaku nodded stiffly at the younger boy, and moved back into his area of the room. Takeru noticed for the first time that the older boy was at the other side of the room from them, isolated and alone. He made a move towards the other boy, but Kohaku simply ignored him, turned his back to the group and lay still. Takeru stood standing for a minute or two more before crawling back to where he'd been laying before, gently nudging aside the gangly arms of his brother that had sprawled over where he'd been lying.

          As he huddled into his brother's arms, reveling in their warmth after the chill of the hallways, he reminded himself that the boy lying by himself on the other side of the room was just a little older than he was. And for some reason, he felt inexplicably sad.

6.

          "Why do you have a picture of my sister?" Kohaku asked without preamble. All the Chosen and Gennai were sitting in the room that Gennai had fed them in the night before, eating breakfast. He ignored the dead silence that fell over the table and kept his eyes on Gennai only.

          "Why do you have a picture of my sister?" Kohaku pulled out the book he'd found the night before in the hidden room off of his lap and pressed his thumb in the small oval indent he'd literally stumbled on the night before. Holding it horizontal and just above the table, a three-dimensional holographic image of a youth his in late teens flickered into life and began speaking a string of liquid syllables. Though logically Kohaku knew that the image was not of his sister – for one thing the person in the hologram was to old to be Neechan and he was a _he_ so that just about wrapped it up – he enjoyed saying it just for the shock value. As if seeing an image of a person who could very well double for his dead sister if pinch came to shove wasn't shocking enough. But then, Kohaku was known as one for going to extremes.

          He was rewarded by the old man's face turning ashen white and crumpling like paper. "He didn't leave anything behind," the old man mumbled almost incoherently to himself, having seemingly forgotten that there was anyone else around. "They said they found nothing. _I_ found nothing." He straightened abruptly.

          "Give it to me," Gennai commanded hoarsely. Kohaku was suddenly afraid of the language of the old man's posture. He fumbled with the book, cutting off the hologram and clutching it to his chest.

          "No."

          "Give me the book." There was something almost dangerous in Gennai's voice. The boy shook his head obstinately.

          "No. It's mine," he hated the petty, childish shrill his voice had taken on, but was suddenly too scared at the thought of having this book, whatever it contained, taken away from him. "I found it! It's mine!"

          "You found it," the old man repeated. He sounded slightly dazed, but there was eagerness there as well. "Where? Tell me where you found it." Kohaku wordlessly pointed behind him, at the hanging on the wall. Gennai stared at him, then at the wall. Then he was at the wall, ripping down the hanging frantically. The children watched in puzzled silence as the old man fell to his knees as he uncovered ajar door set in the wall.

          "We never found anything," he whispered brokenly. "Because he wouldn't let us find anything."

          "Gennai-san?" Koushiro made a move like he was going to go to the old man, but was held back by Tentomon. The insect-like digi shook his head, indicating that this wasn't their affair. 

          "He didn't trust us," Gennai continued to himself, regardless of the children, staring sightlessly into the small space behind the wall filled with scrolls, books and data-pads. Most were decayed with time. "Not that I can blame him. But it hurts. I wonder, Angelus, did you know we would betray you? You always had a sixth sense about things." 

          Gennai then got to his feet and turned to face the children. His face seemed to have aged centuries in the space of a few moments. "May I see that book? Please?" He added unnecessarily, as Kohaku was already gingerly holding the book out to him. He took it gravely, and nodded a wordless thank you. He ran his fingers longing over the cover for a moment, then slipped his fingers underneath, depressing the oval indent Kohaku had discovered to be the trigger for the hologram. The children saw a sweet, sad smile haunt the old man's face as he watched the hologram. He mouthed the words that the image spoke.

          "You can understand what he's saying?" Jyou asked in wonder, causing the other children and digimon to look at him. Not liking to be the center of attention, the be-speckled boy flushed a bit. Gennai didn't look away from the hologram.

          "I should be able to, after all we did train in it together." He turned to the digimon on the floor. "This is the 'dead' language. It was called the divine or holy language, and only priests and templers are trained in it. Once long ago you would have had to learn it because you are the Chosen digi. But not now." He trailed off and lapsed into a melancholy state of remembrance. 

          "Well, what's he saying?" Gomamon asked curiously. The sad smile that had hovered on Gennai's face fell away, replaced by a blank mask.

          "He's saying that this is his personal log or journal. That his name is Veritas Angelus, acolyte of the Elder archbishop Jessiah, and that this is a written record of his experiences since being introduced into the monastery and up to becoming electus alumno to the honored Elder, the archbishop Jessiah."

          "Electus alumno?" Patamon wrinkled his muzzle at the unfamiliar words.

          "Chosen disciple," Gennai said absently, releasing the trigger to the hologram. "Each episcopus, bishop, is allowed to have one favored acolyte. An alumno to replace him or her upon retirement. The electus alumno is special because he or she is the alumno the Elder archbishop has chosen to groom for the leadership of the church. At the death of the Elder, the electus alumno would ascend to become the archbishop and the new Elder." Kohaku could tell that there was a lot the old man was leaving out.

          "So you know him," The amber-eyed boy gestured at the book. Gennai was silent for a moment.

          "No. I thought I did, but I don't." He handed the book back to the astounded Kohaku. "You might as well keep this. I can't use it." The boy looked from the old man to the book and back again. He narrowed his eyes, distrusting the offered gift.

          "What's wrong with it?" Gennai gave a gruff bark of laughter.

          "Nothing's wrong with it." Kohaku felt his lips thin with anger. He did not like being laughed at.

          "Then why are you giving it to me?" The old man sighed.

          "I can't open it. Angelus, the boy this belonged to, put a retina-scanning lock on it," he explained patiently. "It will only open when the correct retina is scanned. And since Angelus is dead, there is very little chance of that happening." Hearing this, the amber-eyed boy reluctantly took the book back. He hugged it possessively to his chest. The person in the hologram might not be his sister, but at this point he didn't really care. It looked close enough like her to bring him some comfort and familiarity. He felt Gennai watch him for a moment before turning to the other children and digi that had waited so patiently behind them.

          "There are some things," he said to them gravely. "That we need to discuss. Come with me."

7.

          The ceiling of the antechamber was high, built on huge columns of soft marble and jade that supported the graceful arches of the domed ceiling. The arches were a masterpiece of architecture. If you could see them that is. They arched like unfurled angel wings, spanning the wide space between columns with deceptive ease. There were delicate carvings there as well. They ran the length of the pillars, and wove their way across the arches. Few knew that there were murals covering the domed ceiling anymore. Just as few knew that the time-blackened pillars were covered in carvings. In the center of the room, there was a dais. It was elevated only about a foot or so off the floor. Any windows in the room had long since been destroyed, leaving it shrouded in darkness, so there were several black iron candelabras scattered about the room, giving off a sickly light. The floor, though one would have to strain themselves now, was once a magnificent mosaic of interlacing stones. And in the center of it all was the dais. And in the center of the dais was a chair.

          The chair was made from dark heartwood of a tree so long extinct that its name could not be remembered. The carver who made it had been very cleaver. The legs of the chair four slender serpents coiled in upon themselves to make strong enough columns to support the seat. The seat was bare and hard, shaped like a dish. The arms were free-floating, not attached to the seat, and carved to look like wisps of clouds drifting down from the mountain of the backrest. And that was what the backrest was carved to look like: a mountain. It was tall and flat with carvings of flying dragons inscribed into the wood. It was truly a masterpiece. And in the chair a tall digi sat brooding.

          He was one of the few digi that could remember how the room had looked before the Uprising, was, perhaps, the only one left. All others were dead or recompiled into different digi, free from any memory of their past lives. And as for the Mon, well, there was only one Mon left that would remember; all the others had been killed in the Uprising. 

          The Uprising.

          It had always surprised him how so much death and chaos could be expressed in one word. There had been few, on either side, that had gotten away unscathed. There had been much mourning done by both sides. He frowned. Though he had supported the Cause, he felt sure that Piedmon had not explored all options when he'd declared war. 

          Ah, but what did he care? It had happened years ago. And he'd never been one to argue for peace and equality; that had always been Angelus.

          Angelus . . . Myotismon knew that his bonded would have frowned on what he'd become. But he wasn't here. He'd left Myotismon alone. He hadn't even had the decency to let Myotismon die with him and their bond. Though he'd come to feel nothing more that a dull aching numbness when he thought about his bonded, that still managed to hurt.

          But, he reminded himself; I didn't come in here to nurse old wounds. And that was quite true. He only came to the antechamber when he needed to think. And lately he'd been doing a lot of that.

          He drummed his tapered fingers on the armrest.

          There had been talk of late. Whispers in the dark of how Piedmon was not very happy with his decision to stop the search for the eighth child, despite the fact that he was the _only_ Dark Master to have ever killed a Chosen. And when Piedmon wasn't happy, it wasn't in his nature to ignore the cause of his unhappiness. Normally he just sent out one of the simpering idiots that he called dark masters, like that moron Puppetmon, to fix it for him. For more personal matters, such as treason in the ranks, he usually sent the _charming_ Ladydevimon to take care of it. Piedmon was a stickler about the populace not knowing about internal affairs. He said it disturbed them.

          Myotismon smiled to himself. Smirked really. Piedmon wouldn't be sending that Omegamon-touched female to him. She was his most loyal underling and he really didn't like losing things he was fond of. Who knows? He might need to grace Myotismon with his own austere presence if he wanted to deal with him, and as it was looking now he just might. Because he knew that Piedmon knew that they both knew that Myotismon was a more powerful than average digi. He could snap Ladydevimon's neck more quickly than you could blink. And he was pretty sure that Piedmon wasn't all that much stronger than that stupid female. That was why Piedmon had asked him to consider joining his side during the Uprising. He was powerful; an alpha class to be exact. And of the very few alphas there were, more than two-thirds had the probability of turning omega in their favor. 

          That scared Piedmon and Myotismon knew it. And knew that Piedmon hated him for his knowledge.

          Perhaps, he thought to himself, it was time to look at dealing with Piedmon. With that clown gone, the ranks would fall to ruin. None of the other dark masters would be able to function without Piedmon, so there would be no real opposition for him.

          And with Myangela, he didn't think that he would have any problems afterwards either.

–  –  –

~Latin used in the chapter:

          "Veritas" – means [truth]. a/n: Angelus' last name was said first, as with the Japanese (i.e., Veritas Angelus, instead of Angelus Veritas)

          "Electus" – means [chosen]

          "Alumno" – means [student] or [disciple]

          "Episcopus" – means [bishop]

~Japanese used in this chapter:

          Okaasama, Okaasan, Kaasama, Kaasan – all are terms for mother (the 'O' is an honorary prefix)

          Otousan – means father

          Neesan, Neechan, Oneesan – all are terms for sister (the 'O' is an honorary prefix)

–  –  –


	7. footnotes

footnotes

–  –  –

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters. All characters are copyright Akiyoshi Hongo, Toei Animation. TM, and Bandai.

–  –  –

Chapter I note: 

          I know I've written Mimi, terribly, terribly out of character, but please stay with me! (This is my first **real fanfic.) What I'm trying to show is that appearances can be deceiving. Now you my also be wondering what I am doing. I am writing this because in the 'Flower Power' episode Lillymon said to Mimi, "You're a very special girl." so I decided to take her at her word. ~. ^**

          Now I have a small request for the readers, would you please send reviews, or what I call 'constructive criticism', please? I really need them. Not flames or gushing praise but honest reviews. Don't just say, 'You're a awful writer, it stinks!' tell me _why it stinks. Tell me what parts are weakly written and need work so I can improve them and make the story more enjoyable. One more thing, you all know 'alpha' means the 'begining' or 'first' and 'omega' means the 'end' or 'last', right? So the title really says, 'Between the Beginning and the End'.  Thanks for your time!_

–  –  –

Note from Chapter II: 

          Well, how do you guys like it so far? I hope it's getting better. Now please let me explain something; I am NOT pairing up any of the characters, they're just children! Yamato feels this way because someone just died saving his life and he feels responsible for it, okay? Please send some C & C and thanks for reading!

–  –  –

Chapter III Note: 

          Okay! The third chapter is done! BOOYAH! Anyways, I got the idea for her name from a wonderful book I read called 'Archangel' by Sharon Shinn. In the book the term 'angela' is the same as saying 'Lady' or 'Miss' and the term 'angelo' is the same as saying 'Lord' or 'Sir'. Also, these terms are used only when addressing an angel. 

          When I called her 'Myangela', I used the word 'My' as in 'mine', so if you think about it, he was really calling her 'My Lady'.  Get it? Yes? No? Who cares! 

          Be a responsible reader and send C & C.

–  –  –

Chapter IV note: 

          Well, well, well. It seems the plot thickens. Bwa ha ha ha! Oh, and I hope the plots coming together now, plus you may be interested to know 'Kohaku' means 'amber'. Alopexusmon's name comes for the genetic name of the artic fox (_Alopex lagopus_) and the gray squirrel (_Sciurus carolinensis_), and he is a cross of the two, hence the name. And for those wondering, terms like 'Omegamon-touched' and 'Sweet Holy Mother Alphamon' are really strong swearwords in the Digiworld.

–  –  –

Chapter V note: 

          Okay, I suck. I am _so_ sorry. To tell the truth, this chapter isn't _really_ finished, but I thought 'what the hell' and posted it anyway. So if you suddenly find that I have replaced this with a revised chapter, don't be surprised. 

          Okay, you may be wondering what the heck I'm on to have written about Myotismon in this way, but one of my greatest beefs has always been the "big bad villain who was destroying everything just for the hell of it." Besides, I think Myotismon is kinda cool. *Dodges large, heavy objects lodged at head*  

          And the third thing I am going to add (most likely at the end of every chapter from now on) is an index of the Latin words I used. Yes, you heard me _Latin!_ Bwa ha ha! With that out of my system, I will also added this note: I will not be using the terms Rookie, Champion, Egg, or In-training as used in the show. I have given them other titles that you will find in the index. The main reason I'm not going to use them is 'cause they just don't sound cool.

          Ciao,

           ~E~ 

          Oh, and by the way, what do you all think of Kohaku? _Please_ tell me what you think of him, is he one of the dreaded Gary Lou's (a.k.a. Mary Sue)? Or is he simply an original character? 

          The song that Kohaku sings is not mine either, sung originally by Jann Arden on her new CD, _Blood Red Cherry,_ and is called "In your keeping". 

–  –  –

Chapter VI note:

           A little late in coming (okay, _very_ late in coming), but hopefully it was worth the wait. As you can see, I've expanded on several different characters in this chapter, which should give you a little more insight just as it raises more questions.

           Trust me, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

           Anyway, moving on. You may have notice that this does not follow the arc of the series and it damned well shouldn't! I started writing this long before the bit with Myotismon had ended so I didn't know anything about the whole Dark spores and so on. This will continue to be very Alternate Universe. 

            Oh and by the way, stick around for the next chapter. Hikari will start making an appearance and you will see more of Gatomon and Wizardmon (and I am going to tell you right now, he ain't dying in _my_ story).

            Ciao,

            ~E~

–  –  –


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